Panelists set the stage for discussions on feminist leadership and reproductive rights at the Reproductive Rights Symposium at the Faculty Club Lounge on Sept. 14. Photo credit: Ashlynn Helms
Leaders in Latin America’s reproductive rights movement, visited the University of Miami on Friday, Sept. 13 to partake in a Reproductive Justice Symposium.
Panelists Marta Alanis and Pascale Solages reflected on their activism in their home countries of Argentina and Haiti, respectively, and spoke to the urgency of the current political situation in Florida and elsewhere in post-Roe America.
“People who have money will always have access to abortion and so this is an attack [on] folks who cannot travel to get care outside of the state. This is an attack on working-class Floridians,” panel moderator Ysabella Osses said.
Currently, the nearest abortion clinic in a state in which abortion is legal and unrestricted by gestational limits is in Danville, Virginia — a 12-hour, 850-mile drive from Coral Gables.
“The cost of living is extremely high in South Florida… you need to make $75,000 a year just to support a [2-person] household. Having a child adds $20,000 or more,” Santra Denis of the Miami Workers Center said.
“In banning abortion you’re creating immense financial strain” while forcing women to bring children into potentially unsafe housing situations with “issues like black mold or no air conditioning.”
“It’s just as much a wealth inequality issue as it is a women’s rights issue,” Denis said.
Religious orthodoxy was a recurring topic of the afternoon. Catholic conviction motivates restrictive abortion laws in many nations, as well as women’s attitudes toward its legalization.
The event was sponsored by Latinas en Marcha and Yes on 4. Also contributing to the panel were activist Andrea Mercado of Florida Rising and Claire Oueslati-Porter, a UM professor and director of gender and sexuality studies.
When asked whether the activism of Alanis and Solages inspired her to become more politically involved in the pursuit of abortion access, UM law student Natalie Kemper said, “Absolutely.”
“We’re so fortunate that we live in a country where we can voice our opinions, go against the government and not be afraid of repercussions.”
A panelist addresses the audience during the Reproductive Rights Symposium at the Faculty Club Lounge on Sept. 14. Photo credit: Ashlynn Helms
Marta Alanis
Marta Alanis began her journey in feminist activism in Argentina in the early 1970s in founding Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir (Catholics for the Right to Decide). At the time, a brutal military dictatorship reigned and the Catholic Church had substantial political influence.
Alanis explained in Spanish, and translated to English via translator, that the word “abortion” was a major social taboo and that most Argentinians remain ideologically opposed to it.
Despite the religious fervor with which Argentinian women then led their lives, and the fact that abortion was not legalized in the nation until 2020, they too found ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
Alanis recalls a 1973 conversation with 20 Catholic women in which 14 of them had had abortions.
“Fue un milagro que todos estaban vivos e ilesos,” she said, which translates to, “It was a wonder they were all alive and unharmed.”
In 2003, Alanis and her contemporaries launched the “green wave,” distributing green bandanas to symbolize women’s reproductive rights. Green was a symbol of “hope, health and life.”
The movement continued to gain momentum. In 2018, as Argentina inched ever closer to decriminalizing abortion, thousands of abortion-rights demonstrators flooded the streets of Buenos Aires in a “sea of green.”
The nation ran out of green fabric. “La gente tenía que cruzar la frontera con Bolivia para conseguirla,” Alanis said, translating to, “People had to cross the border into Bolivia to get it.”
Green bandanas were distributed at the Symposium.
When asked what advice she would give to advocates in the U.S., Alanis emphasized that women’s economic and reproductive autonomy could only be achieved through political participation and that activism is not for the impatient.
“You can’t be discouraged when there doesn’t appear to be progress,” she said. Indeed, only in her 47th year of activism did abortion become decriminalized in Argentina, though not once did she lose sight of why it mattered, Alanis said.
Pascale Solages
Pascale Solages, a feminist organizer from Miami Workers Centre with over 10 years of experience in feminist movement building, has a story that is perhaps even more shocking.
She is a founding member of Nègès Mawon, an organization that provides access to reproductive healthcare in Haiti by distributing abortion pills and creating a network of private doctors and nurses who safely, and secretly, perform abortion procedures.
In desperately impoverished and politically volatile Haiti, abortion is criminal. If prosecuted, both doctors who perform the procedure and women who self-abort face life in prison.
Heavily armed gangs terrorize the Caribbean nation. Gangs use “collective rapes” and other types of sexual assaults to “instill fear, punish, subjugate and inflict pain on local populations with the ultimate goal of expanding their areas of influence,” U.N. officials have reported.
Solages said that the government’s very limited resources go toward addressing gang murders, more than 4,700 of which occurred in 2023. This leaves the countless women and children who have been raped entirely without support.
What’s more is that the law fails to differentiate between pregnancies caused by rape and incest and pregnancies resulting from consensual relationships – abortion carries the same consequence regardless.
Everyone involved in the organization is in grave danger of arrest and imprisonment.
Yet, Solages believes that her work is “incredibly important,” given that “complications arising from pregnancy and unsafe abortions are the third leading cause of death among Haitian women.” Haiti has the highest maternal mortality rate in the Western hemisphere.
Solages estimates that only about 10% of Haitian women say they want abortion to be legalized. There are several reasons for this, she says, including their religious convictions, their deep distrust of the government and the existence of risky home “remedies” that are passed down through generations of Haitian women.
When asked how abortion-rights activists should approach American “church folk” regarding the issue, Solages said, “You have to be willing to go into communities and talk to women and girls. And most of the time you can’t say the word ‘abortion.’”
“We go into tiny villages all over [Haiti] and put on a play called Danta… It’s about a woman who mourns the death of her daughter after she dies of an unsafe abortion. So, that way… because this experience is so common… they start to listen. Then we can teach them how to use contraceptives or distribute birth control or tell them about our clinics.”
Solages said there is currently a governmental commission in place considering decriminalizing abortion in Haiti. Of its seven members, six are men and one is a priest. As such, she has very little hope that anything will change.
“There is still so much work to be done” as women continue to die in vain from unsafe abortions, Solages said.
“You have to know what time is on the clock of the world. Now is the time to fight.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-18 16:13:21
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