Washington, February 28 Dozens of Latin American and American activists gathered in Washington on Tuesday to spread the “green wave” in the north of the continent, amid the possibility of greater restrictions in the United States of the right to ‘abortion.
A few days before a federal judge’s decision that could restrict access to the nationally known abortion pill mifepristone, more than 70 women waved green tissues, a symbol of the fight for abortion .
This symbolic act closed a three-day convention, where activists, from countries where abortion has been decriminalized, such as Argentina or Colombia, and others where this practice is still persecuted, such as El Salvador, exchanged ideas on how to organize and lobby governments to extend the law or remove bans.
“Many Americans believe that our way of mobilizing is the best and that there is nothing we can learn from the rest of the world,” Renee Bracey, an activist in Washington who shines a light on the stories told EFE. of women who have had an abortion.
The case of the United States, where a Supreme Court ruling removed the protection of abortion, decriminalized since 1973, has triggered alerts in the region, where the feminist movement has won recent victories in countries such as Colombia , which legalized voluntary termination of pregnancy. a little over a year ago.
“I’ve seen the same stigma, prejudice and denial of rights happening in other countries in the United States, which were very safe with the law; we see there’s a constant risk,” said said Sergia Galván, an activist from the Dominican Republic. , told EFE one of the five countries in the region where abortion is illegal in all cases.
Morena Herrera, a longtime advocate for reproductive rights in El Salvador, where women can go to jail for having abortions, laments the setback the United States has experienced.
“For many years we looked at American feminists and the rights they had; now the realities of many states here are similar to El Salvador,” the former guerrilla said.
Six months after the Supreme Court’s ruling, which overturned the historic “Roe counts Wade” ruling, 24 of the 50 US states have restricted or are about to restrict abortion, according to an analysis by the Gottmacher Institute.
For Marta Alanis, leader of the Catholic Association for the Right to Decide in Argentina, the situation in the United States should serve to unite pro-abortion feminists in the region.
“We have no borders and we will support each other in the actions that are necessary,” said the activist.
A Texas federal judge is expected to rule in the coming days on a lawsuit seeking to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion is still legal.
Mifepristone, approved in 2000 by the regulatory body, can be used with misoprostol to terminate a pregnancy before the end of the third month of pregnancy and, according to the Guttmacher Institute, abortions with this type of drug accounted for 54% cases. Pregnancy terminations in the United States in the past two years. ECE
aaca/er
(picture)(video)