Abortion Rights Lawfare in Latin America, 2017

The effects of lawfare on abortion deserve special attention on account of the potential implications for gender relations, the dignity, health, autonomy and wellbeing of vulnerable groups, and for social policy. In the majority of Latin America, access to legal abortion is highly restricted. This project analysed the strategic use of rights and law in battles over abortion rights in Latin America, and the various effects of this lawfare between opposing groups. Lawfare, is in this project defined as the phenomenon of civil society actors adopting diverse legal and illegal, formal and informal strategies to engage legal institutions in order to further or halt policy reform and social change. Lawfare in various forms has become a central feature of political life in most Latin America countries, but the growing scholarship on the interaction between judicial institutions and human rights in the region has mainly focused on socially progressive, rights-expanding forms of lawfare. Taking rights to legal abortion as a point of inquiry in order to attend to the counter-progressive use of courts and other government institutions, the project analysed the nature, form, causes and particularly the consequences of lawfare in Latin America, focusing particularly on the creation of norms and judicial rulings, their implementation and effects. It did this through comparison of a range of country-specific cases including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, El Salvador and two studies analysing regional and global dimensions and trends of lawfare around abortion and women's health rights. The analysis of the different social, moral and political contexts and opportunity structures at play paid attention to national and transnational aspects of mobilization, networking and norm diffusion (and reactions to it) amongst Latin America social movements and within different institutions of Latin American states.

A timeline/chronology for Latin America as a region and individual countries on laws, legislative initiatives and key court rulings can be found on this webpage: http://www.lawtransform.no/timeline/

The research results show that: (1) there is no clear pattern of backlash - the abortion right law is both cumulative and conditional. The experiences from Latin America are immensely different from the patterns found in research from the US; (2) the pro-abortion movement in Latin America has been influenced by the expanded perspective and cleverer use of strategies in order to get through legislative amendments; (3) the anti-abortion movements have focused on the executive and the legislative powers in order to secure constitutional amendments and new legislature to restrict abortion rights; (4) like the international human rights have been used to promote women's right to abortion, actors from counter movements have in a similar degree used right legislations and have built new alliances directed towards national elections; (5) litigation is used both by the pro- and anti-choice groups and national courts of law have in a predominantly degree ruled cases in favour of an extended right to abortion; (6) public opinion polls are key factors, and all groups, both for and against are complying towards the public opinion; (7) international forums, like the UN, have been used successfully by advocates for abortion in order to promote rights for legal and safe abortions; (8) litigations in the inter-American human right system have expanded the right to legal abortion and have therefore been a key resource in the work to transform the judicial framework into concrete guidelines that provides safe and secure abortions and prevention services.