Situated Voices 19

Reproductive and Sexual Rights. Struggles for the Right to Decide

Tuesday, 13 April 2021 - 7pm
Free access
Place
Online platform 
Language
Spanish and English with simultaneous translation
Coordinator
Justa Montero
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Programme
Situated Voices
Feminist protester in Poland, 2020. Photo: Pawel Starzec. Courtesy of Archive of Public Protests (APP), Poland
Feminist protester in Poland, 2020. Photo: Pawel Starzec. Courtesy of Archive of Public Protests (APP), Poland

Women’s right to decide and the struggles for reproductive and sexual rights have formed one of the channels of articulation for feminisms, and are currently configured as a driving force that imbues debates with vitality and generates new energies. 

More specifically, the access to sex education and sexual health, the voluntary termination of pregnancy, and the right to the free expression of sexuality and desire have historically been demanded by the feminist movement, in an alliance with LGTBIQ+ movements, and still continue today.

Globally, we are currently witnessing the co-existence of a complex range of situations with regard to the experiences of reproduction and sexuality, the way in which society interprets them and the way in which they are legislated. A broad spectrum that spans from the powerful pro-abortion movement articulated in Argentina and its dissemination across the feminist movement in Latin America, to feminist uprisings in countries like Poland, where these achievements are under threat from the emergence of governments proposing a regressive model in line with legal models anchored in the past and which pose a threat to the consolidation of rights and forms of democratic freedom.       

This debate looks at different political, organisational, technological and mutual support strategies for feminist movements, as well as contributing to reflecting and constructing feminist thought by activisms in different territories; namely, in Argentina, Poland, Italy, El Salvador and Spain.

Participants

Sílvia Aldavert Garcia is coordinator of the Family Planning Association of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands (APFCiB). She has also been involved in the Campanya pel Dret a l'Avortament Lliure i Gratuït (Campaign for the Right to Free Abortion).

Morena Herrera is a human rights activist from El Salvador and known for her work against the ban on abortion in the aforementioned country. In 1990, she was founding member of the feminist organisation Las Dignas (Women for Dignity), and is currently president of the Citizen Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion. She is also part of the Feminist Collective for Local Development.  

Marta Lempart is a lawyer and feminist activist from Poland. She is co-founder of the movement Ogólnopolski Strajk Kobiet, OSK (Polish Women’s Strike), which articulated mass feminist protests in Poland in 2020. In addition to the struggle for reproductive rights, she also participates in LGTBIQ+ movements and those of people with functional disability. 

Eleonora Mizzoni is a member of Obiezione Respinta (Rejected Objection), a mutual support network for the access to women’s reproductive rights in Italy, opposite the conscientious objection embraced by many medical and pharmaceutical professionals. 

Justa Montero is an activist and expert in gender and equality policies. She was co-founder of a women’s centre in the east of Madrid, the Commission for the Right to Abortion and the Feminist Assembly of Madrid. She is part of Coordinadora Feminista (The Federation of Feminist Organisations from the Spanish State).

Martha Rosenberg is a doctor and psychoanalyst, an historical feminist activist in Argentina, an active member of the National Campaign for Legal, Safe and Free Abortion, and a pioneer in this struggle in Argentina.