CMI Brief | 2017

A new conservative social movement? Latin America’s regional strategies to
restrict abortion rights

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   This brief highlights some of the main strategies deployed to restrict
   the right to safe and legal abortion in Latin America. Challenging
   beliefs that movements towards restriction of abortion rights are local
   in character, it argues that – similar to the movement for the
   decriminalization of abortion – country movements against women’s
   abortion rights are part of regional alliances, and there is a high
   level of exchange amongst organizations from different countries.
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Introduction

   This brief is based on the results of the Centre on Law and Social
   Transformation’s project Abortion Rights Lawfare in Latin America
   financed by the Research Program on Latin America LATINAMERIKA of the
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   Civil society actors have adopted diverse legal and illegal, formal and
   informal strategies to engage legal institutions in order to further or
   halt policy reform and social change to advance or restrict abortion
   rights.

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   Bills in the Congress: Mexico and Brazil.

    Interestingly, social mobilization – including public demonstrations,
   collection of signatures and organization of campaigns – have been used
   both by groups in favor of advancing the expansion of abortion rights
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   actors have used similar legal strategies to advance criminalization
   and/or to prevent the decriminalization of abortion. Our results
   indicate that the movement against abortion rights in Latin America is
   a regional movement with some level of coordination allowing actors
   involved to exchange experiences and knowhow. This can be seen in the
   development of similar strategies, such as acting in the same arenas
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   Analysis of the strategies used by the actors opposed to abortion
   reveals the political power enjoyed by these actors, and in general the
   movement against the decriminalization of abortion in Latin America.
   The courts are not an unfamiliar arena for these actors, however, their
   political power allows the use of the legislative and executive
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   Journal Article | 2019

The Political, Research, Programmatic, and Social Responses to Adolescent
Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the 25 Years Since the
International Conference on Population and Development