Sutton&Borland FeministStudies PDF

Framing Abortion Rights in Argentina’s
Encuentros Nacionales de Mujeres
Barbara Sutton and Elizabeth Borland
A recent television broadcast in Argentina showed a remarkable

scene that highlights the inroads made by Argentine abortion rights
activists in the last few years.¹ Fifty or so legislators across gender and
party lines endorsed a bill to legalize abortion, with a number of them
participating in a 2012 press conference announcing the initiative.²
Bright green campaign symbols stood out in the packed room, most
notably on a large banner and the kerchiefs that activists wore around
their necks; they were the symbols of a broad coalition that spear-
headed the bill, the Campaña Nacional por el Derecho al Aborto Legal,
Seguro y Gratuito (National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe,
and Free Abortion).³ Perhaps most surprising of all was that legisla-
tors, and not only activists, made these symbols their own by don-
ning the green scarves.
To fully make sense of this scene, it is necessary to frame it in a
broader historical context. Abortion has been long criminalized in
Argentina, despite a vocal campaign to make it accessible. From the
streets to the Argentine Congress, the struggle to legalize abortion in
Argentina has featured tireless activist interventions in multiple arenas.
A particular women’s movement space deserves special attention: the
annual Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres or National Women’s Meet-
ing (hereafter, Encuentro). Many of the strategies, organizations, and
Feminist Studies 39, no. 1. © 2013 by Feminist Studies, Inc.

194
Barbara Sutton and Elizabeth Borland 195
arguments for abortion rights in Argentina emerged and developed

there. In fact, it was at the 2003 Encuentro in the city of Rosario that
women in the Encuentro’s traditional march first wore the green ker-
chiefs as a symbol of their support for abortion rights, and increasing
numbers have donned them in years since, reflecting the expansion
of the demand for abortion rights in Argentina.
What are the Encuentros? Every year starting in 1986, thousands
of women in Argentina have come together to hold this major activ-
ist event. Initiated by women concerned with gender injustice, and
starting with around one thousand participants, this event has grown
steadily in size and has expanded to represent a wide range of groups
and perspectives. Recent Encuentros have brought together up to
thirty thousand women from all walks of life, both unaffiliated indi-
viduals and members of organizations, including feminist collectives,
poor people’s movements, indigenous groups, labor unions, politi-
cal parties, neighborhood assemblies, rural women’s groups, home-
makers organizations, student associations, and many others.⁴ The
Encuentros are spaces where women of different ages, social classes,
ethnoracial backgrounds, and histories meet, network, organize, reflect
on their lives, and discuss the critical issues of the day.⁵ Each year’s
Encuentro is held in a different province, promoting the inclusion
of women from all over Argentina and shining a spotlight on local
issues.⁶ With openness and growth also comes conflict, particularly
because groups with institutional power, such as those representing
the Catholic Church, have targeted the Encuentros as important bat-
tlegrounds to advance their politics.⁷ One such area of controversy at
the Encuentros is the struggle to legalize abortion in Argentina.
Theme-based discussions at the Encuentros are compiled in
published documents, called conclusiones (conclusions), that summa-
rize participants’ exchanges. These documents constitute fascinating
and rich sources of data; they chart the varied interests, perspectives,
and conflicts within the women’s movement in Argentina in relation
to national and international events. The ebb and flow of themes in
these documents offer an intriguing gauge of Argentina’s political life
and the challenges faced by women’s rights activists. Our analysis in
this article of over twenty years of conclusiones identifies moments
when concerns emerged or disappeared and when interest in themes
rose or fell. We examine discourse in support of abortion rights, an
196 Barbara Sutton and Elizabeth Borland
issue that has inspired increasing activist mobilization in Argentina

and the rest of Latin America. We track how reproductive rights have
registered a growing presence in the conclusiones over time.
In particular, we analyze movement frames or “interpretative
schema[s]” for abortion rights: distinctive claims for the legalization/
decriminalization of abortion.⁸ Frames, as Myra Marx Ferree argues,
form in historically and culturally specific social settings and are
influenced by existing power relations. The conclusiones document
how specific frames have evolved in the Encuentros’ politically con-
tested space. Our systematic analysis of abortion rights frames within
the conclusiones illuminates how activists create and amend collective
action frames and how these frames are related to social and political
processes. We show that Encuentros’ participants deploy a multiplic-
ity of frames for abortion rights, including those that are what Ferree
terms “resonant” (fitting prevailing cultural discourse) and “radical”
(non-culturally resonant).⁹
Studying the Encuentros reveals aspects of the ongoing develop-
ment of a broad-based women’s movement for abortion rights in Argen-
tina. The Encuentros illustrate how feminist and popular (working-
class and poor) women’s organizations coalesce around common goals.
At the same time, activists also deploy multiple discursive and pro-
test strategies that reflect their distinct political sensibilities, analyses,
and interests. At the Encuentros, dialogue about abortion rights takes
place among women from different social locations, and the emerg-
ing demands cannot be delineated simply according to the concerns
of a few middle-class feminists, as stereotypes might suggest. Partic-
ular features of the event — for example, the grassroots, plural, and
horizontal character of the Encuentros — facilitate the expression of
diverse viewpoints and an expansion of the types of demands that
get made for abortion rights. The Encuentros are vital arenas for
the abortion rights movement. Even though these events are nour-
ished by organizing for reproductive rights that occurs year-round in
different locales, they are also a wellspring of ideas and actions.
This study of the Encuentros reflects our scholarly and activist
feminist standpoints. We approach this project not only with the goal
of contributing knowledge, but also as a way to support and partic-
ipate in efforts to advance women’s reproductive rights. In what fol-
lows, we first highlight our central points in relation to the literature
on abortion rights frames. Then we provide an overview of the abor-

tion rights movement in Argentina and the Encuentros Nacionales
de Mujeres. Third, we describe our methodological approach to con-
tent analysis of over two decades of Encuentros’ conclusiones. Fourth,
we present our findings on the growing importance of reproduc-
tive rights at the Encuentros and the main frames for abortion rights.
Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for the direction
of the abortion rights movement in Argentina. We hope that aspects
of the Argentine experience might be taken into account in struggles
to defend and expand access to abortion elsewhere.
Abortion Rights Frames

Studies on abortion rights movements, such as Ferree’s comparison
of abortion framings in the United States and Germany, show that
the ways activists frame their claims are important to the achieve-
ment of their goals and also have far-reaching consequences. Indeed,
arguments that activists advance (and the issues they remain silent
about) partly affect how reforms are implemented, who is included
in or excluded from the benefits of such changes, and the unintended
consequences or backlash that may follow. Activists making claims
present more or less culturally resonant arguments, which affects
whether a movement’s claims will be echoed by policymakers and
others.
Attention to context is critical for analyzing abortion rights
frames. While activists certainly innovate, they also draw on exist-
ing cultural resources and political histories to develop claims. As
Ferree notes, “Just which ideas and interests are radical and which are
resonant will depend on the local structuring of discourses.” ¹⁰ And
as Annulla Linders also points out, although abortion rights goals
in different contexts may look similar, movement arguments can
be quite different. For example, in Sweden, a country with a strong
social welfare tradition, activists advanced interpretations of abor-
tion as an emergency measure taken by women experiencing social
or economic hardship.¹¹ In the United States, where liberal individu-
alism prevails, women’s right to choose became a prevailing feminist
interpretative frame. Women’s right to decide over their own bodies
emerged within feminist arguments in the late 1960s, but it became a
central frame after Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that
established the framework for legal abortion in the United States.¹² In

Germany, with a tradition of protectionist policy, mainstream fem-
inists emphasized state protection,¹³ and in Catholic Ireland, where
struggles about national identity infused abortion debates, repro-
ductive rights advocates “developed pragmatic arguments … framed
in terms of the interests of families and the need of women in the
nation.” ¹⁴ In Latin America, feminists have worked to frame unsafe
abortion as an issue of “public health and of social justice, defend-
ing at the same time internationally recognized reproductive rights.”
To this, Mexican feminists added claims for civil rights and the con-
stitutional protection of freedom of conscience and arguments that
would appeal to Catholics by emphasizing human dignity.¹⁵
Our analysis reveals that Encuentros participants have collec-
tively and cumulatively advanced a variety of frames in support of
abortion rights, including some claims that are resonant and others
that are radical in Argentina. Such frames have the potential to appeal
to different constituencies, for they incorporate diverse standpoints.
In this sense, frames deployed at the Encuentros provide a good case
for thinking about social diversity within movements, speaking to
work that explores pluralism as both a central challenge to collec-
tive identity and a builder of movement solidarity.¹⁶ In his work on
the framing of reproductive rights in the United States, Gene Burns
argues that more successful frames allow for a diversity of standpoints,
building “a bridge across diverse constituencies that come at an issue
from different perspectives.” ¹⁷ Diverse movements in pluralistic soci-
eties must find common ground in order to work for social change.
Because the Encuentros are a microcosm of movement diver-
sity in Argentina, they compel activists to consider this challenge
year in and year out. We argue that some of the frames deployed —
those built around human rights, economic/social justice, public
health, and pragmatism — have special potential to answer this need:
to develop common ground among groups that approach abortion
from different perspectives. At the same time, arguments that fem-
inists are more likely than other actors to make (for example, about
women’s right to make decisions about their lives and bodies) are still
important. While the feminist movement in Argentina remains a rel-
atively small constituency within the broader women’s movement,
feminist ideas have influenced changes in public consciousness and
concrete policy transformation pertaining to gender relations, sexu-

ality, and women’s conditions.¹⁸
Argentine feminists have asserted political autonomy and resisted
cooptation from larger groups, while popular women’s organizations
have maintained the importance of common interests with their
male counterparts in gender-mixed organizations. Many feminists
also embrace horizontality for decision making, which can stand in
the way of coordinating with other more massive and often hierar-
chical organizations. Thus, relationships between feminists and pop-
ular groups (including gender-mixed movements and parties) have
required a negotiated balance around class, organizational, and ide-
ological differences.¹⁹ These negotiations are reflected in abortion
rights frames.
Women’s Movements and Abortion Rights in Argentina

The Reproductive Rights Movement
In Argentina abortion is all but completely illegal. Argentine law crim-
inalizes abortion except when the woman’s life or health is at risk
and in cases of pregnancy resulting from “a rape or an assault against
chastity [atentado al pudor] committed on an idiot or demented woman,”
as described in article 86 of the Argentine Penal Code. However, a recent
Human Rights Watch report details the complicated procedures and
hostile environment that make it hard for women to even access their
limited rights to nonpunishable abortion, and few such abortions are
ever carried out legally. Furthermore, abortion complications have
been a leading cause of maternal mortality (accounting for over 20
percent of maternal deaths).²⁰
In such a context, the Encuentros are vital venues for the repro-
ductive rights movement. In fact, the first Argentine organization
for abortion rights — La Comisión por el Derecho al Aborto (The
Commission for the Right to Abortion) — was formed in 1988, when
founders met at the Encuentro. Other groups, composed primarily
of middle-class women, formed in the early to mid-1990s, a period
when abortion rights reemerged in the Encuentros after several years
without focal workshops on abortion issues. This period marked
the founding of the umbrella group Mujeres Autoconvocadas Para
Decidir en Libertad (MADEL), which roughly translates as Women
Coming Together for Freedom of Choice, and the start of the Argen-
tine branch of Catholics for Choice. During the lead-up to the Con-
stitutional Convention of 1994, then-president Carlos Menem and
prominent members of Opus Dei lobbied to include a clear clause for
“defense of human life from the moment of conception” that would
have prohibited abortion completely: MADEL and other abortion
rights supporters were able to block this attempt, although ambig-
uous language remained. Still, in 1998 Menem instituted March 25
as the Day of the Unborn Child (coinciding with the celebration of
the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary) as a message against abortion
rights and a salute to the Catholic Church. This initiative was sup-
ported not only by local church authorities but also by figures with
links to international Christian right organizations, including US-
based Human Life International.²¹ Since then, groups around Argen-
tina have endorsed proposals for legislation to legalize and decrim-
inalize abortion but have been unable to overcome the Catholic
Church’s institutionalized power in Argentine politics.²² They have
had more success with other sexual and reproductive rights lobbying,
including the passage of a 2002 law to ensure the right to birth con-
trol information and access to contraception and 2006 legislation to
create the National Program of Integral Sexual Education.
Argentina’s abortion rights movement can be placed in the con-
text of similar struggles throughout Latin America.²³ Not coinci-
dentally, it was at the fifth Latin American and Caribbean Feminist
Encuentro — held in 1990 in San Bernardo, Argentina — that partici-
pants formed a region-wide committee to coordinate abortion rights
activism. They also encouraged the formation of national commis-
sions and declared September 28 “the day to celebrate the cause of
abortion rights in Latin American and Caribbean countries (a date
chosen in memory of the 1871 Brazilian law that declared free all chil-
dren born of a slave mother).” ²⁴ Argentine reproductive rights activ-
ists have regularly participated in the Latin American and Caribbean
Encuentros, and debates have echoed one another.
The demand for abortion rights, which started first as a mostly
feminist concern, has become more general and popular over time,
particularly after the 2001 economic and political crisis in Argen-
tina, which fomented women’s rising collective action. In 2002,
partly through the participation of feminists in popular movements,
abortion rights demands were endorsed by sectors of the movement

of Asambleas Populares Barriales (Popular Neighborhood Assemblies)
and the Piquetero/a (road blockade) movement of unemployed work-
ers. The 2003 Encuentro in Rosario, where activists convened a spe-
cial assembly on abortion, galvanized and organized this wave of sup-
port, building toward the 2005 launch of the National Campaign for
the Right to Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion. Marches in major cities by
thousands of women in support of abortion rights in 2003 and subse-
quent years continue to strengthen the movement.²⁵
The growing movement for abortion rights has faced challenges
from the Catholic Church. Conflicts involving the Church have flared
up during the last decade’s Encuentros, particularly as Catholic activ-
ists and local congregants have increased their efforts to contest fem-
inist perspectives. From 1997, conservative forces organized counter-
movement actions, such as sending trained activists to Encuentros
or holding a counter-Encuentro.²⁶ The demand for separation of
church and state has been a rallying cry among feminists. Many
argue that the Catholic Church’s influence on policy causes discrim-
ination based on religious doctrines that is antithetical to democracy.
However, targeting the Catholic Church is less attractive to women
who support reproductive rights but identify as Catholic and/or sup-
port otherwise progressive Catholic grassroots groups. Some of these
women may eschew framing the Catholic Church as the “enemy” or
participating in coalitions that do so, even when they agree abortion
should be legalized. Nonetheless, confrontations with the Catholic
Church are hard to avoid given its strong opposition to reproductive
and sexual rights.
One of the ideological challenges that abortion rights activists
confront in Argentina is the powerful symbol that motherhood repre-
sents, both politically and culturally. The association of womanhood
with motherhood remains strong, and pregnancy termination coun-
ters this expectation, at least at the time of the procedure (since many
women who abort pregnancies already have or eventually will have
children). Maternity in Argentina is glorified by religious icons such
as the Virgin Mary, cultural lore captured in such popular phrases as
madre hay una sola (you only get one mother), and punitive abortion laws
that aim to enforce motherhood in the face of unwanted pregnancies.
In fact, motherhood has traditionally provided an important path
for women’s political activism, as famously illustrated by the Madres

de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo), a movement that
emerged during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976 –1983)
to demand the safe return of their “disappeared” children. Interest-
ingly, and as we shall see later, the experiences of human rights vio-
lations during the dictatorship, including the security forces’ torture
of pregnant women and illicit appropriation of their babies, also pro-
vides an interpretative frame that filters through abortion rights dis-
course. Prominent activists from the two organizations of Mothers
of the Plaza de Mayo have come to support the decriminalization of
abortion. Nora Cortiñas, of Madres de Plaza de Mayo – Línea Funda-
dora, explained that this is controversial for a group that has defined
itself as life-givers (that is, as mothers). She frames women’s right to
decide about their bodies in the context of a broader “struggle for free-
dom” in which the Madres are involved.²⁷ Similarly, Hebe de Bonafini,
president of the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo spoke in favor of
legal abortion during a 2012 conference on Egalitarian Access to Safe
Abortion that took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She drew on her
position as a mother who “bet[s] on life” to defend “the life of women”
deprived from rights.²⁸
Over the last decade since 2001, the economic crisis and the result-
ing protests have significantly changed Argentina’s political and social
landscape. This crisis shook the political institutions to the core, and
during the period that followed, politicians started to give a mea-
sure of response to long-term and new social movement demands.
For instance, the government of President Néstor Kirchner (2003 –
2007) promoted the repeal of legislation that had ensured the impu-
nity of crimes against humanity perpetrated during the dictatorship,
which was followed by the opening of trials and subsequent convic-
tions. In 2007, his wife — Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — became
the first woman to be elected president in Argentina, and she was
then reelected for a second term in 2011. She vowed to continue the
human rights policies of her predecessor.
Even though “woman” does not equal “feminist,” the impor-
tance of having an elected woman at the highest political post cannot
be underestimated, and it builds on the sizeable number of women
in the Argentine Congress promoted by a 1991 “quota law” (requiring
that at least 30 percent of candidates for national elected positions be
women).²⁹ The increased presence of female legislators helped create

a political environment that was more sensitive to problems affecting
women, which has proved fertile ground for reform, including on
sexual and reproductive rights. Fernández de Kirchner supported a
number of progressive legislative changes relevant to feminist politics:
for example, a 2009 comprehensive law to help prevent, redress, and
end gender violence. Yet the president has also declared she is “against
abortion.” ³⁰ Pressure is mounting toward a vigorous legislative debate
on abortion legalization, and it remains to be seen whether the presi-
dent’s personal values will be enough to stop progressive reform.
Background of the Encuentros Nacionales de Mujeres

The Argentine Encuentros Nacionales de Mujeres were born in a con-
text of democratic opening and renewed broad-based women’s activ-
ism after a period of brutal military dictatorship that lasted from 1976
to 1983. The founders of the Argentine Encuentros were influenced by
women’s international organizing, such as the 1985 NGO forum held
in Nairobi that closed the United Nations Decade on Women and the
Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentros (established in
1981). Among other things, the latter inspired Argentine organizers
to structure their national Encuentros around theme-based discus-
sion forums called workshops.³¹ The regional Encuentros also helped
reinforce the principle of autonomy that is evidenced in the commit-
ment to national Encuentros being autoconvocados — that is, self-orga-
nized without direction or control by external social and political
actors, such as political parties.³²
Organizers of the first Argentine Encuentros echoed this yearn-
ing for autonomy and fostered workshops as participatory structures
in which women would speak a título personal (from a personal point of
view), not representing or under the auspices of organizations. Wom-
en’s individual participation, even when their perspectives might
be influenced by organizations, is seen by many feminists in Argen-
tina as essential to maintaining movement autonomy and promot-
ing women’s articulation of their own experiences. The workshop
format, which became a central feature of the meetings, is also aimed
at destabilizing hierarchy and encouraging democratic dialogue —
goals that reflect a tradition of horizontality in Argentine feminism.
The Encuentros, and the workshops in particular, are arenas

where women can hear each other (even if conflict sometimes makes
it difficult). Perhaps the centrality of women’s experiences to this
political space is what has attracted so many: to participate in work-
shops, make their presence felt through the march that is custom-
ary at each Encuentro, share meals, and take part in the Encuentro’s
peña (cultural celebration); and to take a break from other obligations in
order to meet with other women. In light of the many hurdles that the
Encuentros have faced over time (for example, financial and organi-
zational challenges, oppositional campaigns, attacks on facilities and
participants, and indifference from major media), the uninterrupted
continuity and growth of the Encuentros is in itself remarkable.
While the meetings have grown and developed, they have main-
tained the same basic format: women from across Argentina gather
for three days and participate in two-day workshops of their choice.
A workshop is a discussion space focused on a specific topic. Work-
shops can be divided into comisiones, or sections, when the participants
exceed a certain number (between twenty-five and forty depending
on the meeting, although this number is occasionally exceeded, even
by hundreds). Topics range from economics to reproductive rights,
global politics, sexuality, violence, the media, and others (see Table
1). The organizers for the Encuentro — a local host committee that
gathers resources — pick a series of workshop themes. As participants
arrive, other topics may be added, and groups can self-organize to
form workshops to focus on new themes. Workshops are held simul-
taneously and not tracked under broader topics. It is generally under-
stood that only women can participate in the workshops, yet the
meaning of “woman” is itself contested and debates have occurred
over whether trans women can participate.³³
In each workshop, participants share their experiences and
exchange ideas, often with contentious debate. Using a participant-
centered process, designated coordinadoras (coordinators) facilitate dis-
cussion and, along with secretarias (secretaries) in each workshop, draft
the group’s conclusiones. Each workshop’s conclusiones are then read
in an open venue during the Encuentros’ last day and are eventu-
ally compiled into a publication provided to all participants (and,
more recently, posted online). Although the basic structure of the
Encuentros has not gone without challenge and some have suggested
alternative formats over the years, change has been resisted; most
participants refuse to turn them into either “forums for ‘experts who
know’” or “assemblies for activists” to vote for resolutions.³⁴ Many
feminists, in particular, are adamant about maintaining the work-
shops as the “heart of the Encuentros” and continuing the practice of
exchanging experiences and recording positions in the conclusiones
without voting for a particular action or declaration.³⁵
Our participation in the 2002 Encuentro in Salta gave us a flavor
for the exchanges that take place in workshops and how conclusio-
nes are drafted. Each of us participated in different workshops where
women in classrooms vigorously discussed issues such as sexuality,
identity, reproductive rights, and women’s activism.³⁶ While the title
of workshops offered a general focus, this did not mean that women
abstained from discussing other issues. Thus abortion was not just
discussed in workshops devoted to related matters but emerged in
others as well. In a workshop on “identity,” for instance, a young par-
ticipant shared her abortion experience, including feelings of guilt
and the Catholic Church’s influence on her suffering. Two positions
emerged on whether it is a woman or God who can make decisions
on “life,” and these were included in the conclusiones draft.
Some workshops were particularly contentious, and dialogue
sometimes turned heated. In a workshop on sexuality, tensions devel-
oped as women discussed sexuality and procreation. A handful of
women held a conservative view that coincided with Catholic dogma:
they were against abortion rights, favored abstinence to avoid sexu-
ally transmitted diseases, only accepted “natural” contraception, and
seemed to oppose masturbation. Tensions between this group and
the workshop’s majority escalated when it was time to draft conclu-
siones. According to Encuentro rules, all positions had to be recorded,
and decisions about the final wording were to be made by consen-
sus, not by voting. The women in the minority opposed initiatives to
specify which positions were majority or minority; the perspectives
of both sides would be depicted as holding equal weight. Some of the
women in the majority expressed frustration about this, as well as the
perceived attempt by the minority to introduce wording about issues
that had not been debated in the workshop. Ultimately both positions
were indicated but with clarification of majority or minority support.³⁷
Struggles over the wording of conclusiones show that these doc-

uments cannot be taken as “objective” reflections of workshop con-
versations but as products of power contestations. The conclusiones
reflect different women’s efforts to have their political and ideologi-
cal standpoints included in documents that survive the workshop’s
transient face-to-face exchanges. Still, the conclusiones offer a valu-
able historical approximation to discourse at the Encuentros.
Content Analysis of Encuentros Conclusiones

This project is based on a content analysis of the complete set of conclu-
siones at the Encuentros from 1986 to 2007. The conclusiones compile
summaries of the discussions in each of the workshops (and comisio-
nes) in a given Encuentro. They have been published as booklets that
have grown in size from dozens to hundreds of pages, as the number
of participants and comisiones increased. In the twenty-two years that
we analyzed, there were conclusiones from a total of 1664 workshops/
comisiones. After a preliminary reading of these documents, we cre-
ated a list of themes to categorize the workshops, including twenty-
two distinctive categories, plus one residual category (see Table 1).
Ta bl e 1. List of Thematic Categories Classifying Workshops
Thematic Category Focus of Workshops Included

Economy and Work work, unemployment, rural workers,
domestic work, factories, self-employment
Reproductive Rights abortion, sterilization, contraception,

reproductive and sexual rights
Violence gender violence, abuse of children,

self-defense
Age Groups adolescents, older women
Identity identity
Sexuality homosexuality, lesbianism, sexuality

Thematic Category Focus of Workshops Included

Pornography and prostitution, sex work, pornography
Prostitution
Institutionalized Politics political parties, political power
Activism and Social Encuentros history, neighborhood

Movements organizing, labor movement, feminism,
activism
Human Rights human rights, access to justice, incarceration,

repression, judicial system
Health healthcare, HIV/AIDS, mental health,

addiction, alternative therapies
Education gender studies, university, education
Family family, childcare
Ethnicity and Immigration migration, indigenous people
International Politics global crisis, globalization, Latin American

solidarity
Environment ecology, environmentalism
Media and media representation, communication

Communication methods and styles
Culture and Arts artistic production, arts, culture
Science and Technology science, technology
Religion and Spirituality church and state relations, spirituality
Disability disability/differently abled people
Sports sports, exercise, physical fitness

After pretesting, we used these categories to code all twenty-two years

of conclusiones, categorizing each workshop’s conclusiones as focused
on one of these themes based on the session’s title or (if necessary) the
text of the conclusiones. Then, we counted and recorded the number
of workshops and comisiones with conclusiones for each theme in
that year.³⁸ Workshops that did not fall into any thematic categories
were coded “other.” A second round of coding focused only on the
conclusiones of 110 workshops/comisiones with reproductive rights
themes. The following list of Encuentros held from 1986 –2007 iden-
tifies those with workshops on reproductive rights themes (Table 2).
Ta bl e 2 . List of Argentine Encuentros Nacionales de Mujeres, 1986 – 2007*
Year Location Year Location

1986 Buenos Aires 1997 San Juan
1987 Córdoba 1998 Chaco
1988 Mendoza 1999 Bariloche
1989 Rosario 2000 Paraná
1990 Río Hondo 2001 La Plata
1991 Mar del Plata 2002 Salta
1992 Neuquén 2003 Rosario
1993 Tucumán 2004 Mendoza
1994 Corrientes 2005 Mar del Plata
1995 Jujuy 2006 Jujuy
1996 Buenos Aires 2007 Córdoba
* Years with workshops on reproductive rights appear in bold.

Evolution of Claims at the Encuentros

We traced the thematic categories for workshops and comisiones with
recorded conclusiones over the entire period (1986 –2007) to chart
the evolution of different themes.³⁹ This analysis also documents
the growth of the Encuentros (see Figure 1). For each Encuentro, we
counted the smallest group units that met to discuss a particular
theme: in some cases the smallest unit was the workshop, but usually
the smallest unit was the comisión (this was the case when a work-
shop theme garnered so much interest from participants that new
sections, or comisiones, had to be formed).
F igu r e 1. Number of Workshops/Comisiones, by year

140
120
Number of Workshops/Comisiones
100
80
60
40
20
0
1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006
We then examined the prevalence of different themes by counting

the number of workshops/comisiones in each category. The analysis
shows that the most common themes (as a percentage of all workshops/
comisiones) are activism (13 percent), economy and work (12 percent),
age groups (especially youth) (9 percent), institutionalized politics (7
percent), reproductive rights (7 percent), and violence (6 percent). As
the Encuentros have grown and more topics have appeared, the pop-
ularity of these thematic categories has guaranteed that they are cov-
ered by multiple workshops each year, often with multiple subtopics

for each theme.
Abortion and Reproductive Rights

We closely examine reproductive rights since it has been an important
women’s movement demand and has gained significant momentum.
If we isolate this category, we can see this pattern (see Figure 2). A time-
line (Figure 3) highlights important events that can help place this
growing momentum in perspective.
F igu r e 2 . eproductive Rights as a Percentage

R
of All Workshops/Comisiones, by year
18%
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
1986 1991 1996 2001 2006
Clearly, interest in discussing reproductive rights has increased over

the years. The growing popularity of reproductive rights workshops
since the mid-1990s may be related to the fact that the reproductive
rights movement started to gain ground after the 1994 Cairo and 1995
Beijing United Nations conferences, when feminists were chagrined
that Argentine representatives sided with the Vatican so emphat-
ically.⁴⁰ Since 1997 the countermovement, embodied by representa-
tives of the Catholic Church, saw the Encuentros as a strategic venue
for their counterclaims, producing a reaction from reproductive

rights supporters.
After the 2001 economic crisis, and in the midst of widespread
activism, we see a remarkable surge in the percentage of comisiones
focused on reproductive rights. The passage of legislation to create
a national program on Sexual Health and Responsible Procreation
in 2002 helped galvanize activist interest in reproductive rights. Not
only were different organizations intent on testing the law and mon-
itoring its implementation, but the law’s recognition of some repro-
ductive rights also gave impetus to fight for what was not included:
legal abortion. The work of the National Campaign for the Right to
Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion, launched in 2005, helped intensify a
focus on abortion both inside and outside the Encuentros. In the last
few Encuentros included in this study, workshops on reproductive
rights attracted the most interest, including over twenty comisiones
in 2005 and 2007.
Framing Abortion Rights at the Encuentros

Social movement scholars have paid particular attention to fram-
ing processes as central to understanding movement dynamics, so in
our study of abortion rights discourse, we chose to do frame analysis.
This approach enables us to methodically identify, count, and inter-
pret existing frames in the conclusiones documents. We coded frames
in the conclusiones from sixteen years of Encuentros (that is, all
Encuentros that included reproductive rights workshops during the
1986 –2007 period). After a preliminary reading of all the conclusio-
nes for reproductive rights workshops (amounting to 110 workshops/
comisiones), we identified key frame categories (see Table 3), which
we then used to systematically code the texts. The framing units
counted in the text were sentences or sentence fragments that could
be understood as claims, that is, neither random words or phrases
nor whole paragraphs. Some of the wording was recurrent, forming
identifiable slogans. We analyzed frames contained both in slogans
and in other kinds of phrases and sentences contained in the con-
clusiones. Sometimes the units of text analyzed contained parts that
corresponded to different frames. In such cases the same overall unit
of text was classified under more than one frame, but we highlighted
the section that corresponded to each specific frame. We coded for all
F igu r e 3. imeline of Major Events Relevant

T
to the Reproductive Rights Movement in Argentina
Decree 2274/86 repeals

Peronist gov’t (1974) ban of
activities for fertility control Constitutional reform
Law 24012: “Quota Law”

UN World Conference
on Women (Beijing)
UN Conference on
Population and
Development (Cairo)
Decree 1033/92 repeals

dictatorship policies
restricting fertility control
1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996
Emergence of abortion Formation of MADEL

workshop at Encuentros (Mujeres Autoconvocadas
para Decidir en Libertad)
Formation of the Comisión

por el Derecho al Aborto
Latin American and Caribbean Feminist

Encuentro: Declaration of September 28
Law 25673: National

Program of Sexual Health
and Responsible Procreation
Church starts active efforts
to influence Encuentros
(1997)
Law 26150: National Program
of Integral Sexual Education
Decree 1406/98 establishes

“Day of the Child to Be Born”
(1998)
Argentina ratifies CEDAW
Optional Protocol
Economic crisis and
political upheaval
1998 2000 2002 2004 2006
Special Assembly on
abortion at the Encuentro
(Rosario)
Demand for abortion rights

endorsed by sectors of
Asambleas and Piqueteros
Launch of the National Campaign

for Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion
the frames we detected (not just dominant ones) in each of the con-
clusiones. However, all the coded text represented the perspectives of
participants who made claims in favor of abortion rights.
It is worth noting that, particularly after the 1997 interventions
by the Catholic Church, the conclusiones document distinct strate-
gies for expressing conflict. Some try to come to consensus on certain
points and state where disagreement continued; others use num-
bers to demonstrate either minority or majority positions; others
just say majority then minority. One gets a sense of discord by read-
ing these conclusiones. On a few occasions, an antiabortion group
formed its own workshop; more usually, it can be seen in the record-
ing of minority views. Some workshops seem to resolve debates ami-
cably (indications of “respect” are mentioned) and end with points
of agreement about other issues. While we noted countermovement
claims in the text, we did not code their frames, and they are not part
of the analysis. Thus the following findings reflect only claims sup-
porting abortion rights.
Ta bl e 3. List of Coded Abortion Rights Frames
Frames Abortion Rights As…

1. Public Health a public health issue
2. Economic/Social Justice a matter of economic and social justice
3. Choice a freedom/liberal citizenship issue
4. Body a right to the body
5. Pragmatism a pragmatic intervention
6. Life a defense of women’s lives
7. Human Rights a human rights issue
8. Other [residual category]

While there is some degree of overlap between frames, they respond

to distinct lines of argumentation or logics.
Main Frames
1. Public Health. Given the fact that clandestine abortion has seri-
ous health risks for women, it is not surprising that one of the main
ways abortion is framed in the conclusiones is as a public health issue.
The workshops often include medical statistics linking abortion and
maternal mortality (although there is wide variation in the data pro-
vided) and emphasize that abortion is a problem of health and pro-
vision of women’s healthcare. We coded the theme “public health”
when frames referred to these statistics, as well as when they referred
to medical institutions, medical terms for particular types of preg-
nancy, damages to health, and nonsanitary conditions. From the first
workshop on abortion in 1988, when participants demanded the right
to abortion as a reaction to the “numerous deaths of women due
to the practice of abortion in infrahuman conditions,” ⁴¹ this frame
has appeared in each year we coded. Later years also frequently cited
maternal mortality; the need for medically safe abortion became an
important theme in the lema (slogan) por el aborto legal, seguro y gratuito
(for legal, safe, and free abortion). The public health frame appeals to
broad humanitarian concerns rather than making more controver-
sial claims about women’s rights. While this frame is compelling, and
matches language used internationally by influential organizations
such as United Nations agencies, a possible shortcoming for using it
alone is that it does not leave much space to argue for abortion rights
if risks to women’s health are not high (for example, for normal preg-
nancies and clandestine abortions practiced in sanitary conditions).
2. Economic/Social Justice. This frame can be traced in statements

that highlight the conditions of economically marginalized women
and the class disparities shaping the causes, conditions, and effects of
illegal abortion. For example, participants in a 2000 workshop stated
their refusal “to hold women responsible — [women] who are vic-
tims of the terrible social conditions in which we live, of unemploy-
ment, hunger and misery — for the abortions that are performed.”
Participants in a 2007 abortion workshop added, “We hold the State,

this government and the Church and other sectors of power responsi-
ble for these deaths [of women] who are the poorest sectors of society.”
As in the case of the public health frames, arguments on economic/
social justice can appeal to movements addressing poverty, unem-
ployment, and social violence. This is a frame that can “speak to” left-
ist political parties and mixed-gender popular organizations con-
cerned with class inequalities and social injustice for whom gender
discrimination is not an explicit or main preoccupation. Except for the
third and fourth Encuentros (1988 and 1989, in Mendoza and Rosa-
rio, respectively), all other Encuentros with reproductive rights work-
shops (though not all workshops) refer to economic/social justice in
the conclusiones. It is interesting that the two earliest Encuentros
that were focused on abortion do not mention economic disparities;
in 1988 in Mendoza (the third Encuentro) there is reference to women
dying due to abortions performed in “infrahuman conditions,” but
class differences are not explicitly mentioned. The popularization of
the struggle for abortion rights years later seems to go hand-in-hand
with explanations that are explicitly sensitive to the plight of working-
class and poor women.
3. Choice. This frame was coded when abortion was depicted as

a matter of freedom, implicitly invoking a right to citizenship in its
liberal conception. We coded it when we saw statements about the
right to autonomous decision-making in general, rather than specifi-
cally about bodily rights. The conclusiones used this frame to refer to
the obligation of the state to guarantee women’s citizenship rights; to
not interfere with their decisions, their agency and autonomy, or their
freedom to decide about their lives and futures. For instance, partici-
pants in a 2002 workshop on contraception and abortion mention the
need to “foster freedom of choice and conscience of all people living
in Argentina.” The first time we detected this frame was in 1988 (the
first year we coded abortion frames), but it did not appear again until
1995, the year after the embattled Constitutional Convention. After this
point, it appeared at least once a year, often in language about wom-
en’s “freedom to decide” based on one’s “beliefs and values.” Lan-
guage emphasizing freedom is not surprising given its use in many
movements and the long legacy of liberal individualism in Western
political thought. The Argentine branch of Catholics for Choice,

which has been influential in efforts to rally around abortion rights
in Argentina, emphasizes this frame in its very name. Yet the concept
of choice does not speak directly to the contexts in which choices are
made (for example, economic constraints that are addressed more
explicitly by other frames). In the last five years of the sample, choice
also figures in language related to what conclusiones from 2004 called
“non-compulsory motherhood, but desired and chosen,” for example,
statements such as “freedom to each one to be a mother or not” that
appeared in 2004 and “to decide when and how to have children” that
appeared in 2003.
4. Body. This frame includes statements about women’s “right to

decide about our bodies,” “the right to sexual pleasure,” and other ref-
erences to bodily rights that are longstanding feminist concerns usu-
ally overlooked by other movements. The fact that this frame was
used in the pioneer workshop on abortion in 1988 illustrates the force
of the feminist voice that also influenced the creation of the Encuen-
tros themselves. This frame is often repeated in the conclusiones but
it is not part of any of the movement’s common slogans, which high-
lights the varying level of resonance of this strain of feminist dis-
course in Argentina. Claims about women’s bodily rights disrupt
patriarchal arrangements that aim for, or result in, the expropriation
of women from their own bodies.⁴² Yet in the context of a patriar-
chal culture — which feminist movements challenge at the same time
that they work within the culture to accomplish their aims — this
frame does not convey the same sense of urgency as potential death
(legal abortion to save women’s lives). In political terms, women’s bodily
rights, and particularly women’s bodily pleasure, are often ignored or
constructed by the countermovement as selfish and undeserved or
qualified by the notion that these rights do not supersede those of the
embryo/fetus.
5. Pragmatism. Abortion rights can also be framed as a pragmatic

intervention, either at the individual level (as a woman’s last resort)
or at the collective level (with the notion that abortion happens, and
that state and society need to come to terms with it “because in real-
ity, it is done, and we want to have it done legally,” according to the
1995 conclusiones). We identified this frame when conclusiones noted

that the criminalization of abortion does not prevent women from
having them, such as this example from 1999: “Abortion is a reality.
To be in favor or against abortion is a fallacy; one is either in favor
of legal abortion or of clandestine abortion.” A central slogan of the
movement, anticonceptivos para no abortar, aborto legal para no morir (contracep-
tion to prevent abortion, legal abortion to prevent death), captures
this pragmatic dimension. This frame, used since 1988, makes visi-
ble the moral hypocrisy of a law that is ineffective in preventing the
behavior that it criminalizes and causes additional harm: in Argen-
tina, abortion does not typically result in criminal convictions, but
its criminalization still has enormous deleterious effects, especially
on needy women.
6. Life. This frame denotes abortion rights activists’ appropriation

and resignification of the countermovement’s emphasis on “life,” this
time to assert the value of a woman’s life. Interestingly, the frame
appeared for the first time in 1999, that is, after the Catholic Church’s
more active attempts to impact the Encuentros. This frame seems to
respond to the so-called “pro-life” movement’s opposition to abor-
tion legalization based on ethical grounds. An activist at the 2003
Encuentro pointed out the ethical contradiction: “preoccupation for
the life of the embryo seems to be greater than that for the life of the
person [woman], particularly by the Church.” This contradiction is
thrown into stark relief in the case of women who literally lose their
lives after clandestine abortions performed in dangerous conditions.
But the meaning of the frame goes beyond preventing maternal mor-
tality; it presents abortion legalization as a “defense of women’s lives”
in a holistic way — the lives of women as already existing persons
with needs, desires, rights, and not just obligations toward others.
Activists emphasize the “right to life” in relation to women’s ability to
enjoy basic “freedom” and, especially, to live a “dignified life.” ⁴³
7. Human Rights. This frame has a double meaning or resonance:

first, with the feminist rallying call that “women’s rights are human
rights,” and second, with responses to the history of human rights
violations (for example, torture and disappearance) in the con-
text of state terrorism in Argentina. It was drawn upon relatively
infrequently in the coded conclusiones — only in ten instances. In the

case of the first connotation, we detected it when women said that the
right to abortion is a human right of women or when they referred to
the deplorable conditions in which abortion is performed in Argen-
tina as a violation of women’s human rights. For example, in the 1989
Encuentro, women in the workshop on abortion asserted that the ways
in which teenagers’ abortions were completed in a hospital in Rosario
“without anesthesia” to “make them expiate their guilt” constituted
human rights violations.
We see this frame appearing at both ends of the coded conclusio-
nes on reproductive rights issues, with a few mentions in the middle.
The frame appeared in the first two workshops on abortion (in 1988
and 1989). This suggests that the idea of women’s human rights was
present in the Encuentros before the slogan “women’s rights are human
rights” became internationally popularized, which it did in the con-
text of women’s organizing for the United Nations Conference on
Human Rights (held in Vienna in 1993).⁴⁴ In the new millennium, the
frame appears in a couple of workshops on “Strategies for Access to
Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion.” ⁴⁵ This is significant because human
rights discourse has a special resonance in Argentina and highlights
the second connotation of the frame, which evokes the legacy of state
terror. This appeared, for example, in 1993 when participants referred
to the Catholic Church’s concern over the life of the fetus as hypo-
critical, given its institutional collusion with the state’s terrorist mil-
itary regime: “The doublespeak of the church that claims to defend
life forgets the ecclesiastic hierarchy’s complicity during the mili-
tary dictatorship, when it silenced the torture and death of pregnant
women in captivity.”
8. Other. This residual category was left for uncommon claims not
addressed elsewhere. These included the following coding subcatego-
ries: “Corrupt” (n=4), which pointed to the corrupt profits that illegal-
ity promotes (for example, payments to physicians or police); “Wom-
en’s Liberation” (n=8), which was coded when the conclusiones made
an argument about abortion as central to challenging the oppres-
sion of women; and “Eugenics” (n=3), which emphasized population
trends or the fact that access to abortion could mean that fewer poor
children would be born. The latter is remarkable more by its absence
than by its presence, and we make a special note of it because its

scarce use counters implicit messages in the population control rhet-
oric of some international agencies. Eugenicist frames typically make
it more difficult for feminist reproductive rights efforts to distinguish
themselves from population control.
Evolution of Key Slogans at the Encuentros

Some of the text in support of abortion rights in the conclusiones
evolved over time into slogans. Slogans are important because they
capture central and collaboratively voiced demands of the movement
for abortion rights (a movement formed by heterogeneous individ-
uals and organizations). We identified as slogans those phrases that
appeared repeatedly in the conclusiones, as well as in protest chants,
banners, flyers, websites, and more formal documents that we encoun-
tered through our fieldwork and movement participation. These slo-
gans are deceptively simple phrases that are actually more complex in
the frames they communicate. Key slogans have continuity, although
they also undergo modifications in order to add nuance, to empha-
size, or to communicate particular aspects not previously conveyed.
Table 4 offers an example of evolution in slogans over time, based on
the coded conclusiones.
Ta bl e 4. Overview of Key Slogan Mutations
1988 “Anticonceptivos para no abortar, aborto legal para no morir”

“Contraception to prevent abortion, legal abortion to prevent death”
1998 “Anticonceptivos gratuitos para no abortar y aborto legal y gratuito para no morir”
“Free contraception to prevent abortion, and legal and free
abortion to prevent death”
2003 With the emergence of workshops on “Strategies,” the following

slogan starts to appear regularly:
“Aborto legal, seguro, y gratuito”
“Legal, safe, and free abortion”
2004 The following phrase appears preceding the original slogan:

“Educación para decidir” or “Educación sexual para decidir”
“Education for choice” or “Sex education for choice”
2005 “Educación sexual para decidir, anticonceptivos para no abortar y aborto seguro,
legal y gratuito para no morir”
“Sex education for choice, contraception to prevent abortion, and
safe, legal, and free abortion to prevent death”
It was in the workshops on abortion in 1988 that the conclusio-

nes first recorded the slogan anticonceptivos para no abortar, aborto legal para
no morir (contraception to prevent abortion, legal abortion to prevent
death). The slogan combines aspects of pragmatism (abortion as a last
resort) and public health concerns. These conclusiones also marked
the creation of the first Argentine group organized specifically for
abortion rights — Comisión por el Derecho al Aborto (Commission
for the Right to Abortion) — a fact noted that year with the inclu-
sion of the group’s postal box in the workshop’s conclusiones. The orig-
inal slogan appears frequently in our coded documents on reproduc-
tive rights themes, sometimes in multiple references within the same
workshop’s conclusiones, but it was not a standard reference in the
earliest years of the movement for abortion rights: although it first
appeared in 1988, it was not mentioned again until 1995.
Abortion rights activists faced several challenges during this
period in including reproductive rights within the Encuentros
agenda: workshops on reproductive rights (with conclusiones) were
held only in four Encuentros during the 1986 –1995 period. In 1995,
the original slogan was placed prominently at the beginning and end
of the conclusiones, as well as in a text box in the center of the page.
After this point, it appears regularly, usually using those exact words
but occasionally being modified, such as in 1998, when a conclusión
stated, anticonceptivos gratuitos para no abortar y aborto legal y gratuito para no morir
(free contraception to prevent abortion and legal and free abortion
to prevent death). Several years later in 2004, the traditional slogan
began to appear preceded regularly by educación para decidir (education
for choice) or educación sexual para decidir (sex education for choice). This
could be connected to the 2002 passage of the National Law 25673
on Sexual Health and Responsible Procreation, which aims, among
other things, to increase access to information and promote wom-

en’s decision making. The traditional slogan emphasizes a pragmatic
frame linked to a health frame, but the new addition contributes a
choice frame and an emphasis on sex education.
The Encuentros began to include workshops on Strategies for
Access to Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion in 2003. Language about abor-
tion that included variations of the phrase “legal, safe, and free” did
appear prior to this point, but since 2003 the phrase has been used
very regularly, sometimes displacing the traditional slogan. This new
slogan combines two frames in the demand for legalization: health
and economic/social justice. Where the old slogan included health
and pragmatism frames, now pragmatism has been displaced by a
more direct reference to economic/social justice (as reflected in the
claim for abortion gratuito, requiring no payment). Perhaps not surpris-
ingly, this shift in emphasis coincides with Argentina’s period of eco-
nomic hardship post-2001. Certainly, the name of the workshops
(Strategies for Access to Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion ) could be said
to shape discourse in the conclusiones, but repetition of the phrase
“legal, safe, and free abortion” and its insertion into the traditional
slogan to form a new compound demand — Educación sexual para deci-
dir, anticonceptivos para no abortar y aborto seguro, legal y gratuito para no morir (Sex
education for choice, contraception to prevent abortion, and safe, legal
and free abortion to prevent death) — becomes more common in the
last years in the sample when so many workshops focused on repro-
ductive rights.
Frame Prevalence and Collocations

Each set of workshop conclusiones included multiple frames, and
most included many frames, sometimes used in the same unit of
coded text. Among the coded frames, the two most prevalent ones
focus on public health and economic/social justice, followed by a
second tier addressing the right to choose, bodily rights, and prag-
matic logic (see Table 5).
Ta bl e 5. Frequency of Seven Abortion Rights Frames*
Frame Frequency
Public Health 177
Economic-Social Justice 117
Choice 68
Body 66
Pragmatism 63
Life 17
Human Rights 10
* Includes frames contained in slogans
We examined the prevalence of each frame annually to better

understand the way the frames trend over time. We then selected two
key frames, each representing distinct framing logics, for compari-
son: “public health” and “body.” “Public health” is significant because
it is the most dominant frame, both in terms of frequency of use and
inclusion in movement slogans. It is a resonant frame that empha-
sizes authoritative medical discourse. In contrast, “body” is not as fre-
quently used, and it does not appear in any of the slogans. It is a radical
frame that asserts a feminist view of women as autonomous, embod-
ied subjects. Figure 4 shows the prevalence of these frames between
1995 and 2007, the period when there were consistent rates due to
workshops on reproductive rights being held in every year. Each of
these frames was increasingly used over this period, as demonstrated
by the trend lines. While we can think of these frames as comple-
mentary, the pattern of use suggests that they also compete: when
the use of “public health” increases, the use of “body” decreases, and
vice versa. Participants, including feminists, have adopted the reso-
nant “public health” discourse, but feminists still struggle to encour-
age others to adopt the more radical “body” frame.
F igu r e 4. Comparing the Prevalence of Public Health and Body,

1995 –2007*
Public Health Body Linear (Public Health) Linear (Body)
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
* Frames as a percentage of all coded units per year
In our content analysis we also examined collocations — the pres-

ence of different frames that go together within the same coded seg-
ments — to determine when and how multiple frames were used
jointly. This occurred 132 times, accounting for 306 of the 534 units
of coded text (sentences or sentence fragments that could be under-
stood as claims). The majority of the collocations involved two frames,
but there were ten cases of three-frame collocations and sixteen cases
of four-frame collocations. Most collocations occurred between the
top five frames. However “human rights,” a frame that only appeared
ten times in the “reproductive rights” workshops dataset, was used in
conjunction with “body” (n=2) and “choice” (n=2).
The use of the key slogans accounts for many collocations, since
slogans were used regularly, and each merges two or more frames.
All of the slogans emphasized public health, but this frame converged
with “pragmatism” in the earliest slogan (“contraception to prevent

abortion, legal abortion to prevent death,” used 20 times), with “eco-
nomic/social justice” in the various slogans that include the phrase
“legal, safe, and free abortion” (n=49), and with “choice” in slogans
that call for “sex education for choice” about reproductive rights
(n=16). Thus, the vast majority of collocations occurred between
frames that are also encapsulated by slogans: “public health” and
“economic/social justice” (n=83) and “public health” and “pragma-
tism” (n=44). This was true, but to a lesser extent, for the joint use
of “public health” and “choice” (n=21), “economic/social justice” and
“pragmatism” (n=20), “choice” and “pragmatism” (n=20), and “eco-
nomic/social justice” and “choice” (n=18). Despite the fact that “body”
was a relatively frequent frame in our analysis, it was less likely than
the other frames to appear in collocations. It never coincided with
“economic/social justice” or “pragmatism” and appears in only one
collocation with “public health.” However, it did commonly collocate
with “choice” (n=10).
In all, collocations appeared in every year we coded except one
(1989, when there were only two segments of text that we identified
as frames), which suggests that the Encuentros have long featured a
multiplicity of frames. In every year in the dataset, multiple frames
appear; in 1988 and 1989 (with only one workshop each year), there
are only two frames used, but in all the other years, at least four
appear (and in most, six or seven). These patterns indicate that the
movement consistently uses diverse frames, and even combines them
within the same segment of text, not only across the Encuentros but
within each workshop. This diversity highlights both the complex-
ity of abortion as a political issue as well as efforts to build support for
legalization among disparate constituencies.
Implications of Multiple Frame Deployment

Overall, we show that the women’s movement in Argentina has
drawn upon multiple frames in its efforts to make abortion rights
a reality. As Ferree argues, advances can come not only from frames
that resonate with a country’s political culture but also from less res-
onant frames that have the potential to create fundamental trans-
formations in the long term.⁴⁶ In the Encuentros, various frames
are deployed side by side. The one frame that seems both politically
questionable and ethically bankrupt—eugenics—appears highly infre-
quently in the coded documents.
In considering the implications of political demands recorded at
the Encuentros, it is important to recognize limitations of this study.
Our findings are descriptive and exploratory, rather than explana-
tory and conclusive. Because we research conclusiones, our analysis is
restricted to what activists discuss with other women in this impor-
tant gathering rather than covering what they argue in broader polit-
ical or legislative arenas. Once activists enter the world of mainstream
political bargaining, it may be more difficult to maintain multiple
frames: compromise may be necessary. However, we do find some
evidence of frame multiplicity outside the realm of Encuentros — for
example, in documents published by the National Campaign for the
Right to Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion, which aims to influence the
formal political process as well as public opinion.⁴⁷ Another limita-
tion of the data is that the conclusiones do not record the political or
organizational affiliations (if any) of workshop participants. Thus, it is
hard to attribute endorsement of particular frames to specific sectors;
activists familiar with the movement might be able to infer affiliation,
but it would still be speculative. Despite these disadvantages, the rich
data in the conclusiones — which are closer to the grassroots than
the media documents often used for frame analysis — expands our
knowledge about abortion politics in a Latin American country.
A number of the frames presented here, particularly when used
in combination, set the bar high for abortion rights demands. While
there is no guarantee that the movement will achieve each of the
goals promoted, activists do not seem to be gagging themselves; they
are not dropping goals that might be deemed unrealistic to attain.
Holding on to inclusive, multiple, and broad arguments may push
the debate in a progressive direction, perhaps one more likely to achieve
movement goals. It may avoid placing activists on the defensive and
in the unfortunate position of only protecting decriminalization.
Significantly in the conclusiones, the “choice” frame trails behind the
most frequently deployed economic/social justice and public health
arguments. Activists are not just asking for the state to allow abor-
tion; they are demanding that the state guarantee accessible and safe
abortion. As the conclusiones of a 2006 Strategies workshop state: “we

women decide; society respects; the State guarantees.”
Frames that demand action from the state in order to ensure that
abortion is a right for all women, and not just those with money, are
especially salient. We see this in the prevalence of “public health” and
“economic/social justice” frames and in the evolution of the move-
ment’s slogans. The phrase “legal, safe, and free abortion” shows a
conception of abortion rights that is more encompassing of the rights
of diverse women than that evidenced in activism that only demands
or accepts “legal” abortion. The latter may be sufficient mostly for
privileged women, but legalization alone does not necessarily ensure
adequate access for poor, rural, or otherwise marginalized women.
A single-minded focus on individual “choice” risks transforming
“access to reproductive options [into] a market matter, not a matter of
gender, racial or economic equality, or human rights.” ⁴⁸
Furthermore, the way abortion rights in Argentina has been
framed rests on notions of healthcare as a right that the state must
guarantee for all citizens. This is an approach that resonates in a con-
text where there is a public health system, albeit imperfect. While activ-
ists demand that women have control of their bodies and some even
provide information on abortion procedures women themselves
carry out, they are not letting the state off the hook.⁴⁹ Abortion is con-
ceptualized as part of a broad healthcare scheme for which state fund-
ing and policy is essential, rather than only a procedure that nongov-
ernmental or private organizations can legally provide at accessible
prices. For instance, under the law project of the National Campaign
for the Right to Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion, access to abortion gratu-
ito (free) would be guaranteed in the public health system and covered
by social and private insurance. That is, there is an expectation that
the state would not only abstain from interfering in women’s private
decisions, but that it would ensure the conditions that enable women
to make them.
The “body” frame evokes notions of individual autonomy that
complement the “choice” frame. However, this frame is also embed-
ded in a fundamental critique of patriarchal structures that have con-
trolled and regulated women’s bodies in significant ways. In that sense,
the presence of this frame reflects the feminist idea that women’s
bodies are not objects or mere vessels for fetuses. Instead this frame
asserts that women are embodied subjects with a right to self-determi-
nation. Yet, despite its considerable prevalence in the conclusiones, the
“body” frame was not part of any major slogan. It may be less palat-
able or compelling to policymakers and the general public, as it chal-
lenges key social arrangements and hegemonic discourse in Argen-
tina (for example, how women’s bodies are portrayed as sexual objects
or as naturally destined for motherhood). Still, this frame may fulfill
a radical function: the circulation of the notion that women have a
right to their bodies may contribute to deeper social changes.⁵⁰
The “pragmatic” frame, in contrast to that focused on the “body,”
regularizes a situation that already exists. The “pragmatic” frame
asserts that women are, in actuality, making decisions about their
lives and bodies despite efforts to the contrary. The frame’s underly-
ing moral force lies in pointing to the hypocrisy of a law that is not
widely enforced but still has negative consequences for women. Ille-
gality has only fueled underground abortion and clandestine practi-
tioners (some of whom may have women’s rights and well-being at
heart but many who are driven by a profit motive, as the frame “cor-
rupt” suggests). The “pragmatic” frame was almost as prevalent as
that of “body” and “choice.”
It is noteworthy that the “human rights” frame is not used more
in our dataset of conclusiones. After all, human rights language is
frequently used in Argentine movements, particularly because of the
history of state terrorism in the country. It is also a master frame to
understand a great number of political and social issues. In order to
make sense of its relatively scant presence, it is necessary to examine
frames in relation to the evolving character of the women’s move-
ment. For example, while women’s right to their bodies has been a
distinctive feminist frame, the “human rights” frame may some-
times be perceived as pertaining to other struggles, not feminism. Yet
feminists have also used this language in recent activist events and
documents by emphasizing the human rights of las humanas (female
humans).⁵¹ Furthermore, in a political context in which human
rights are currently in the spotlight (particularly with ongoing trials
for state crimes during the military dictatorship), human rights lan-
guage resonates with the notion that abortion legalization would
constitute an expansion of democracy — a notion repeated in 2010

events for abortion rights and same-sex marriage legalization.
Several recent developments give abortion rights activists hope
and highlight the importance of multiple frame deployment and
frame bridging. In July 2010, Argentina became the first Latin Ameri-
can country to legalize same-sex marriage, under the banner of matri-
monio igualitario (marriage equality). Many see this as a victory that
creates further openings for abortion rights. Indeed, groups promot-
ing legal abortion were vocal during demonstrations in front of the
Argentine congress in support of same-sex marriage. At that site in
2012, a sign announcing the Acceso Igualitario al Aborto Seguro (Egali-
tarian Access to Safe Abortion) conference emphasized the word igual-
itario (egalitarian) by inscribing it with the rainbow colors associated
with inclusion and diversity.⁵² This evokes linkages between abortion
rights and rights related to sexual orientation and gender diversity. Also
in 2012, the Argentine congress passed a law to guarantee transgender
people’s rights, including the right of medical coverage for procedures
related to gender identity — an inclusion that highlights the connec-
tion between legal rights, access, public health, and economic/social
justice. A bill to legalize abortion has been making its way through
committee, and advances took place surrounding judicial interpreta-
tions of abortion law, notably a 2012 Supreme Court decision clarify-
ing the applicability of nonpunishable abortions related to rape. Abor-
tion rights activists have been working hard to up the ante in various
arenas, including the media, universities, the Ministry of Health, con-
gress, political organizations, and, of course, the Encuentros. The
deployment of multiple frames in these struggles may make it easier
for abortion rights activists to link and build on recent achievements
in the legal arena in relation to sexuality, gender expression, and non-
punishable abortions.
Our findings in this chronological study offer food for thought
about future feminist strategy and scholarship. Future research could
compare the content of Encuentro conclusiones to the organiza-
tions’ own documents, in order to get a better sense of frame sponsor-
ship and the percolation of Encuentros arguments to other realms.
Studies could also examine how frames produced by the abortion
rights movement relate to countermovement frames.⁵³ We detected
interesting discursive dynamics, for example, in how abortion rights

supporters also claimed the term “life” — but in the name of wom-
en’s lives. Attention could also be focused on the organizational back-
and-forth between groups and the discourse of the Encuentros, or
the discourse of the Encuentros vis-à-vis the media. A cross-national
comparison of frames could further expand the scope of inquiry.
Until recently, there has been little scholarly attention given to the
Encuentros and the wealth of information contained in their conclu-
siones. While activists who have participated in the Encuentros over
time have shared insights about how these events have evolved, our
research contributes a systematic analysis that can shine additional
light on this evolution. It is our hope that a focus on abortion rights
frames adds a valuable historical perspective and sociological analysis
of how different frames have been used and how they can be deployed
in future action.
Notes
We thank scholars and activists in Argentina who generously shared their
insights with us, including those who attended our presentation of this proj-
ect at the Segundo Congreso Feminista Internacional in Buenos Aires
and the Instituto Interdisciplinario de Estudios de Género at the Univer-
sity of Buenos Aires. We also thank the following scholars for their sugges-
tions: Kristen Hessler, Leslie Gates, Rachel Sherman, Kendra Smith-Howard,
members of the reading group DaDNYRG, and attendees at the University
of Oregon Sociology Colloquium. Both authors contributed equally to this
article.
1. See Visión Siete, “Oficialismo y Oposición Consensúan un Proyecto Único
por Aborto Legal y Gratuito,” March 20, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/
watch?feature=player_embedded&v=G9neAptvrqU.
2. Mariana Carbajal, “Un Mar de Pañuelos Verdes en Diputados,” Página/12,
March 21, 2012.
3. The literal translation of gratuito is “free” in the sense of not requiring
payment.
4. Attendance estimates come from media reports and movement docu-
ments and are rough approximations. Estimates through 2005 can be
found in Amanda Alma and Paula Lorenzo, Mujeres que se Encuentran: Una
Recuperación Histórica de los Encuentros Nacionales de Mujeres en Argentina (Buenos
Aires: Feminaria, 2009).
5. See Alma and Lorenzo, Mujeres Que se Encuentran; Graciela Alonso and
Raúl Díaz, “Encuentros Nacionales de Mujeres: Pedagogías de Viajes y
Experiencias,” in Hacia una Pedagogía de las Experiencias de las Mujeres, ed. Gra-
ciela Alonso and Raúl Díaz (Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila, 2002), 76 –109;
and Pilar Sánchez, Mujeres 20 Encuentros: Algunas Claves para Entender un Fenó-
meno Único en el Mundo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Agora, 2005).
6. See Table 2 for year and location of each Encuentro studied.
7. Mónica Tarducci, “La Iglesia Católica y los Encuentros Nacionales de
Mujeres,” Estudos Feministas 13, no. 2 (2005): 397 – 402.
8. David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Master Frames and Cycles of
Protest,” in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon D. Morris and Carol
McClurg Mueller (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 133 – 55.
9. Myra Marx Ferree, “Resonance and Radicalism: Feminist Framing in the
Abortion Debates of the United States and Germany,” American Journal of
Sociology 109, no. 2 (2003): 304 – 44.
10. Ibid, 305 – 306.
11. Annulla Linders, “Victory and Beyond: A Historical Comparative Anal-
ysis of the Outcomes of the Abortion Movements in Sweden and the
United States,” Sociological Forum 19, no. 3 (2004): 371 – 404.
12. Linders, “Victory and Beyond”; Ferree, “Resonance and Radicalism”; Linda
Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel, Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion
Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling (New York: Kaplan, 2010).
13. Ferree, “Resonance and Radicalism.”
14. Lisa Smyth, Abortion and Nation: The Politics of Abortion in Ireland (Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, 2005), 145.
15. María Consuelo Mejía, “La Alianza por el Derecho a Decidir: Una Estrate-
gia Conjunta para Incrementar el Acceso de las Mujeres al Aborto Legal y
Seguro,” in Realidades y Coyunturas del Aborto: Entre el Derecho y la Necesidad, ed.
Susana Checa (Buenos Aires: Paidos, 2006), 247 – 51. The quoted passages
from texts originally in Spanish are our translation.
16. Jo Reger, “More Than One Feminism: Organizational Structure and the
Construction of Feminist Identity,” in Social Movements: Identity, Culture, and
the State, ed. David S. Meyer, Nancy Whittier, and Belinda Robnett (Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), 171 – 84.
17. Gene Burns, The Moral Veto: Framing Contraception, Abortion, and Cultural Plural-
ism in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 246.
18. Magui Bellotti, “Autonomía y Legitimidad de las Ideas y Luchas Femini-
stas,” Brujas, no. 33 (October 2007): 7–16.
19. Elizabeth Borland, “Crisis as a Catalyst for Cooperation? Women’s Orga-
nizing in Buenos Aires,” in Strategic Alliances: Coalition Building and Social Move-
ments, ed. Nella Van Dyke and Holly McCammon (Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, 2010), 241 – 65.
20. Marianne Mollmann, Illusions of Care: Lack of Accountability for Reproductive Rights
in Argentina (Human Rights Watch, 2010), http://www.hrw.org/node/92124.
21. Marta Vassallo, in collaboration with Juan Marco Viaggione, María José
Rosado Nunes, and Hans Küng, En Nombre de la Vida (Córdoba: Católicas
por el Derecho a Decidir, 2005), 100 –101.
22. Elizabeth Borland, “Cultural Opportunities and Tactical Choice in the
Argentine and Chilean Reproductive Rights Movements,” Mobilization 9,
no. 3 (2004): 327– 39.
23. Gillian Kane, “Abortion Law Reform in Latin America: Lessons for Advo-
cacy,” Gender & Development 16, no. 2 (2008): 361 –75.
24. Nancy Saporta Sternbach, Marysa Navarro-Aranguren, Patricia Chuchryk,
and Sonia E. Alvarez, “Feminisms in Latin America: From Bogotá to San
Bernardo,” Signs 17, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 429.
25. Elizabeth Borland and Barbara Sutton, “Quotidian Disruption and Wom-
en’s Activism in Times of Crisis, Argentina 2002 – 2003,” Gender & Society 21,
no. 5 (2007): 700 – 22; Graciela Di Marco, El Pueblo Feminista: Movimientos Soci-
ales y Lucha de las Mujeres en Torno a la Ciudadanía (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2011);
Barbara Sutton, Bodies in Crisis: Culture, Violence, and Women’s Resistance in Neolib-
eral Argentina (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010); Alma and
Lorenzo, Mujeres Que Se Encuentran.
26. Tarducci, “La Iglesia Católica.”
27. See “Testimonio de Nora Cortiñas: Madres de Plaza de Mayo: Línea Fun-
dadora,” n.d., interview by Graciela Di Marco, edited by Alejandra Brener.
http://www.unsam.edu.ar/escuelas/humanidades/centros/cedehu/mate-
rial/%2834%29%20Entrevista%20Corti%C3%B1as.pdf
28. See Hebe de Bonafini speaking at the Congreso Acceso Igualitario al Aborto
Seguro (Congress for the Egalitarian Access to Safe Abortion) in Buenos
Aires, Argentina, April 20 –21, 2012. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
qK4kM9uD5ns.
29. As of 2012, women constituted around 38 percent of legislators in the
Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. See Fundación Directorio Legisla-
tivo, “Informe Especial: A 20 Años de la Ley de Cupo Femenino,” http://
www.directoriolegislativo.org/fotos/2012/01/Informe-Cupo-Femenino-10-
01-2012.pdf.
30. Veronica Smink, “El Aborto No Da Votos en Argentina,” BBC Mundo, Sep-
tember 27, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2011/09/110926_
argentina_aborto_congreso_elecciones_vs.shtml.
31. Workshops are focused on a specific topic and can be divided into comisio-
nes, or sections, when the participants exceed a certain number. Therefore
we use the phrase workshops/comisiones to indicate the smallest unit for
discussion at the Encuentros.
32. Sánchez, Mujeres 20 Encuentros; Sonia E. Alvarez et al., “Encountering Latin
American and Caribbean Feminisms,” Signs 28, no. 2 (Winter 2003): 537 –
79; Sternbach et al., “Feminisms in Latin America”: 393 – 434.
33. A trans woman actively participated in a workshop at the Encuentro

Nacional de Mujeres we attended in 2002 in Salta.
34. Graciela Lorenz, Mariana Sarin, and Cristina Wessinger, “Los Talleres de los
Encuentros Nacionales de Mujeres: Cómo y Por Qué” (paper presented at
the II Congreso Feminista Internacional, Buenos Aires, Argentina, May
19 – 22, 2010).
35. Sánchez, Mujeres 20 Encuentros,18.
36. Most participants attend one workshop at the Encuentro, but we each
attended several for shorter periods. Sutton participated in workshops
on women and identity and women and sexuality and attended another
on abortion and contraception for a briefer period. Borland participated
in one workshop on the women’s movement and a second on abortion.
37. After the more militant irruption of the Catholic Church in the Encuen-
tros, marked significantly by the 1997 organization of a counter-Encuen-
tro, we find repeated evidence of this countermovement in the conclu-
siones. For example, there are mentions of the Church’s disruption of
the Encuentros and conflicts with Catholic activists and stronger pres-
ence from those with dominant Catholic views represented by majority/
minority-style reports.
38. To divide and double check the work, we each coded half the dataset (odd
vs. even years) and then reviewed codes, together resolving any unclear
cases (a very small subset).
39. A similar record was created by Alma and Lorenzo, Mujeres Que Se Encuentran,
though they do not classify workshops thematically. Our counts for comis-
iones vary slightly in some cases, largely due to different coding criteria.
40. See Susana Novick, “La Posición Argentina en las Tres Conferencias Mun-
diales de la Población” (Buenos Aires: Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Ger-
mani, 1999), http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/laoap/iigg/dt11.pdf.
41. This and all subsequent direct quotations from the Encuentros corre-
spond to the conclusiones in the specific year referenced.
42. See, for example, Laura Masson, Feministas en Todas Partes: Una Etnografía de Espa-
cios y Narrativas Feministas en Argentina (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2007), 22.
43. Participants made such statements in the 2005, 2006, and 2007 Encuentros.
44. For a condensed history of the international dissemination of the “wom-
en’s rights are human rights” concept, see Charlotte Bunch and Samantha
Frost, “Human Rights,” Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Wom-
en’s Issues and Knowledge, Volume 2, ed. Cheris Kramarae and Dale Spender
(New York: Routledge, 2000).
45. Strategies workshops are a relatively recent innovation to avoid debates
with antiabortion rights activists who attempt to stall efforts to advance
reform. By focusing on “strategies” to legalize abortion, the workshop
title implicitly sidesteps those who do not agree with legalization.

47. A systematic analysis of frames outside the Encuentros is beyond the
scope of this article; however, for examples of multiple frame deploy-
ment, see a booklet documenting campaign achievements, “Una Cam-
paña Nacional para que el Aborto sea Legal, Seguro y Gratuito en Argen-
tina,” from November 2011; and a solicitada (advocacy advertisement),
“Aborto Legal: Una Deuda de la Democracia,” that appeared in newspa-
pers on April 8, 2011, and was endorsed by legislators and a broad spec-
trum of individuals and organizations. See http://abortolegal.com.ar. Sev-
eral of these frames were recently echoed by legislators. See Carbajal, “Un
Mar de Pañuelos Verdes.”
48. Rickie Solinger, Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America
(New York: New York University Press, 2005), 202.
49. For example, an organization of lesbians and feminists offers information
on the correct use of the drug misoprostol so that women who decide to
induce abortions themselves can do it safely. See http://abortoconpastil-
las.info.
51. Campaña Nacional por el Aborto Legal, Seguro y Gratuito, “Cuando los
Derechos Humanos no Llegan a las Humanas,” July 27, 2010, http://www.
abortolegal.com.ar/?p=665.
52. See “Congreso Acceso Igualitario al Aborto Seguro.”
53. Dawn McCaffrey and Jennifer Keys, “Competitive Framing Processes in
the Abortion Debate: Polarization-vilification, Frame Saving, and Frame
Debunking,” Sociological Quarterly 41 (January 2000): 41 – 61.

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Framing Abortion Rights in Argentina’s

Encuentros Nacionales de Mujeres

Barbara Sutton and Elizabeth Borland

A recent television broadcast in Argentina showed a remarkable

Feminist Studies 39, no. 1. © 2013 by Feminist Studies, Inc.

arguments for abortion rights in Argentina emerged and developed

issue that has inspired increasing activist mobilization in Argentina

on abortion rights frames. Then we provide an overview of the abor-

Abortion Rights Frames

established the framework for legal abortion in the United States.¹² In

concrete policy transformation pertaining to gender relations, sexu-

Women’s Movements and Abortion Rights in Argentina

abortion rights demands were endorsed by sectors of the movement

for women’s political activism, as famously illustrated by the Madres

women).²⁹ The increased presence of female legislators helped create

Background of the Encuentros Nacionales de Mujeres

The Encuentros, and the workshops in particular, are arenas

Struggles over the wording of conclusiones show that these doc-

Content Analysis of Encuentros Conclusiones

Ta bl e 1. List of Thematic Categories Classifying Workshops

Thematic Category Focus of Workshops Included

Reproductive Rights abortion, sterilization, contraception,

Violence gender violence, abuse of children,

Age Groups adolescents, older women

Sexuality homosexuality, lesbianism, sexuality

Thematic Category Focus of Workshops Included

Institutionalized Politics political parties, political power

Activism and Social Encuentros history, neighborhood

Human Rights human rights, access to justice, incarceration,

Health healthcare, HIV/AIDS, mental health,

Education gender studies, university, education

Family family, childcare

Ethnicity and Immigration migration, indigenous people

International Politics global crisis, globalization, Latin American

Environment ecology, environmentalism

Media and media representation, communication

Culture and Arts artistic production, arts, culture

Science and Technology science, technology

Religion and Spirituality church and state relations, spirituality

Disability disability/diﬀerently abled people

Sports sports, exercise, physical fitness

After pretesting, we used these categories to code all twenty-two years

Ta bl e 2 . List of Argentine Encuentros Nacionales de Mujeres, 1986 – 2007*

Year Location Year Location

1987 Córdoba 1998 Chaco

1988 Mendoza 1999 Bariloche

1989 Rosario 2000 Paraná

1990 Río Hondo 2001 La Plata

1991 Mar del Plata 2002 Salta

1992 Neuquén 2003 Rosario

1993 Tucumán 2004 Mendoza

1994 Corrientes 2005 Mar del Plata

1995 Jujuy 2006 Jujuy

1996 Buenos Aires 2007 Córdoba

* Years with workshops on reproductive rights appear in bold.

Evolution of Claims at the Encuentros

F igu r e 1. Number of Workshops/Comisiones, by year

We then examined the prevalence of diﬀerent themes by counting

ered by multiple workshops each year, often with multiple subtopics

Abortion and Reproductive Rights

F igu r e 2 .  eproductive Rights as a Percentage

Clearly, interest in discussing reproductive rights has increased over

for their counterclaims, producing a reaction from reproductive

Ta bl e 2 . List of Argentine Encuentros Nacionales de Mujeres, 1986 – 2007*

F igu r e 2 . eproductive Rights as a Percentage

F igu r e 3. imeline of Major Events Relevant

F igu r e 4. Comparing the Prevalence of Public Health and Body,