Latin American activists warn of pushback on reproductive rights

By Sarah Morland and Natalia Siniawski

Latin American rights activists on Thursday warned of growing political threats to reproductive rights across the region, as the United States rolls back access to abortion.

"What we are seeing is a lot of backlash of progress after many years of human rights struggles," Paula Avila-Guillen, executive director of the Women's Equality Center told a conference. "What happens in one country has repercussions."

Latin America has a patchwork of policies on reproductive rights. El Salvador has one of the world's strictest abortion laws, imposing homicide sentences for what rights activists say are miscarriages, while a top Colombian court ruled in 2022 that abortion is for up to 24 weeks from conception.

Many countries in the region limit access to women or girls who can prove their pregnancy carries life-threatening risks or resulted from rape - often causing long delays past gestational week limits.

In Argentina, where abortion is legal, activists pointed to funding cuts by the government of libertarian President Javier Milei, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, that have effectively cut off access to abortion and restricted supplies of contraceptives.

"For us not having contraception is taking us back to the 1960s. It's a really, really, really significant rollback," said Amnesty International Argentina's executive director Mariela Belski.

Belski said state cuts had left a national helpline for gender violence nearly completely unmanned. Provinces were already reporting shortages of misoprostol and mifepristone, essential drugs for safe abortion, after the government froze funding for new purchases.

Milei argues that abortion and feminism are part of a "nefarious ideology" and that the state should not spend money on related services.

Argentina is one of a handful of Latam countries that allow abortion for up to 14 weeks of pregnancy, without needing to prove rape or serious medical conditions.

Milei's party last year presented a bill to criminalize abortion, less than four years after a previous government legalized it, but the measure failed to gather the necessary support.

The World Health Organisation has estimated that 5% to 13% of maternal deaths worldwide are due to unsafe abortions, and that three in every four abortions in Latin America are unsafe.

In the Dominican Republic, where abortion is banned entirely, Natalia Marmol, a Women's Equality Center program lead, said grassroots movements are looking to ease criminal penalties in a country with some of the region's highest maternal mortality and teenage pregnancy rates.

"We're going to have setbacks," Marmol said. "We need to remember this is just a moment and we need to continue to fight so it does not gather more strength."