Argentina legal abortion vote is happening today and here is a selection of beautiful feminist art supporting pro-choice
Less than a month after Ireland’s major abortion referendum, the lower house of Argentina’s congress is voting today whether or not to legalize abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy — a move that would be a major advancement in a region where abortion is typically criminalized. This is the seventh time since 2007 that a draft law for the decriminalization of abortion is presented, but it is the first one that manages to be debated in the Congress.
In the last months an intense discussion pro and against legal abortion attracted the attention of all national media. However, this time it wasn’t the hegemonic media channels the main players in the historic debate: hundreds of thousands of people, many young women (in what begins to be known as “the revolution of daughters”) raised their voices and their personal stories in relation to abortion, and most of all, their constant struggle against sexism and gender violence.
For the approval of the law project — which would later pass to the Senate — at least 129 deputies are required to support it. The key is in the hands of about thirty undecided legislators. In case of being rejected, it would be necessary to wait two years to be able to present a new bill to the Congress. Despite the importance of the votes of those indecisive deputies, the most relevant thing today is the movement that emerged out of this discussion and all the women who will be today outside Congress, who for years fought for the right to abortion and forced the institutional policy to discuss a law in their terms.
Here is a selection of some of the most beautiful feminist art pro-choice I have seen around. The green bandana or scarf that you see in most images is not casual.
A scarf is the symbol of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an association of Argentine mothers whose children “disappeared” during the state terrorism of the military dictatorship, between 1976 and 1983. They organized while trying to learn what had happened to their children, and began to march in 1977 at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace, in public defiance of the government’s state terrorism intended to silence all opposition. The green colour was not coincidence either. “The election arose even before the campaign, in a women’s meeting in 2003, in Rosario. We came to the conclusion that green was a colour not contaminated by political parties and that it had strength. It used to be used by environmentalists, but they did not invade the streets at that time”, said Marta Alanís, one of the leaders of this campaign.
