Activists in Latin America battle to guarantee access to safe abortion in COVID-19 world

By Josefina Salomón & Christopher Alford
7 September 2020

For decades, women human rights defenders across Latin America have been fighting an uphill battle to ensure sexual and reproductive rights, including access to safe abortion, are a reality for all. Over the last five months that battle has turned into a war.

The figures have been shocking for a long time. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned them into a catastrophe, with a potential bleak future.

Continued: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/09/activists-latin-america-access-safe-abortion-covid19/


Latin America’s New Anti-Abortion Battle Line: Fetus Adoption Over Abortion

Latin America's New Anti-Abortion Battle Line: Fetus Adoption Over Abortion
These innovative but controversial initiatives could serve as a model for abortion battles elsewhere.

By Deborah Bonello
Sept 29 2019

There is no word in Spanish for miscarriage. The term aborto espontaneo, which translates to spontaneous abortion, is the language used when pregnancy in Latin America ends suddenly. But as popular opinion in the region — home to some of the world’s most draconian legislation against abortion — slowly moves away from rigid opposition, anti-abortion actors are changing their language and tactics to fight back.

For decades, anti-abortion campaigns in Latin America have been built around principles outlined in the Bible, and values of morality and decency, says Fernanda Doz Costa, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Americas. Now, a new generation of activists opposed to abortion has adopted a rights-based approach arguing in favor of both the mother’s and the child’s rights, or that abortion can be avoided in many cases without the mother having to raise the child.

Continued: https://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/latin-americas-new-anti-abortion-battle-line-fetus-adoption-over-abortion/96949