Feminist activism and party alliances during pandemics: social mobilization in support for the legalization of voluntary abortion
Abstract
After decades of struggle for the legalization of abortion in Argentina, in 2019 President Alberto Fernández took office after including this issue among his campaign promises. However, in 2020 the agenda was dramatically disrupted by the pandemic. Throughout the year 2020 feminisms had to deploy various actions to keep the issue on the agenda and to achieve the approval of the law. This article synthesizes these actions, summarizes the parliamentary debate and the resulting law. It explores the variety of actions deployed when protest was banned as an option as a product of the pandemic and confinement, as well as the relations between activists and state actors that supported the approval. Finally, it analyzes in which ways the unity of peronism favored the approval. Research for this article was conducted through a combination of qualitative methods that included the review of hemerographic sources, state documents, official webpages, social media, and the interview of a prominent activist of the Campaña Nacional por el Derecho al Aborto Legal, Seguro y Gratuito.
