Keywords

Introduction

In the last couple of years, feminist movements and articulations emerging in the political context of contemporary Chile have gained great importance, as well as visibility. In the midst of a severe democratic crisis and advancing biopolitical and anti-feminist forces, multiple and ground-breaking mobilisations have emerged.Footnote 1 Such feminist mobilisations repoliticise issues of the female and feminised body, sexuality and reproduction, while simultaneously confronting employment insecurity, privatisation of healthcare and education, police brutality and exploitation of natural resources. Thus, contemporary feminist articulations in Chile go beyond denouncing patriarchy and sexism by positioning themselves at the centre of political protests against the far-reaching neoliberalisation and precarisation of society and human life, connecting issues of gender, sexuality, class, age, race and ethnicity in different ways (Oyarzún, 2018; Saavedra & Toro, 2018; Motta, 2019). Acknowledging the impossibility of addressing all of these multiple feminist practices, the focus of this chapter will be Chilean feminist mobilisations around reproductive rights and justice.

Aborto Libre, Seguro y Gratuito (‘Easy, Safe and Free Abortion’) is (one of) the common and overarching slogans in the feminist campaign for abortion in Chile. In some cases, Legal (‘legal’) is added to the slogan. The first emblematic demonstration demanding easy, (legal,) safe and free abortion was convoked by Coordinadora de Feministas en Lucha on July 25, 2013.Footnote 2 Since then, new demonstrations are organised on the same date annually, reaching a higher number of attendances each year (Lamadrid & Benitt, 2019; Maira & Carrera, 2019). After the passing of a new law in 2017—partially decriminalising abortion—another slogan has been frequently articulated: No bastan tres causales (‘Three causes are not enough’). This slogan can be found on the Chilean version of the pañuelo verde (green scarf)Footnote 3 that was launched before the demonstration on July 25, 2018 (Fig. 5.1):

Fig. 5.1
A triangular emblem featuring foreign words inscribed on it, with a central illustration depicting two women standing back to back. The woman in the front raises his hand, while the one in the back holds a flag with inscriptions.

The Chilean version of the pañuelo verde that has become an emblematic symbol for the quest for abortion in Latin America

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By examining a range of performative and discursive articulations and strategies visible in the feminist mobilisations around abortion in Chile, the aim of this chapter is to analyse how such strategies, or articulations, are grounded in epistemologies of embodied resistance to past and present biopolitical and anti-gender regimes. As its point of departure, the chapter is based on a study first initiated in 2018, in which I analysed strategies developed and used by four feminist organisations and collectives fighting for reproductive rights in Chile (Persson, 2019).Footnote 4 Developing such analysis in the current chapter, I seek to further discuss feminist articulations of an alternative agenda, focusing on the frames within which the organisations situate their struggle, as well as on their use of language and bodies when challenging current restrictions on abortion. In this way, I wish to contribute to the impressive diversity of this volume by shedding light on the role of situated and embodied feminist knowledges and practices in the transformation of political spaces and subjects.

Chile: Anti-genderism and the Quest for Abortion

I shall start with a brief overview of recent (legal, political and discursive) developments in regard to abortion in Chile. Between 1989 and 2017, abortion in Chile was criminalised under all circumstances.Footnote 5 During the same period, the arena on which feminist politics and struggles for reproductive autonomy took place faced several transformations. In the 1990s, the first decade of regained democracy after years of Augusto Pinochet’s military regime, the feminist movement(s) in Chile was divided, weakened and, to some extent, institutionalised.Footnote 6 The issue of sexual and reproductive rights in general, and abortion in particular, was silenced by conservative forces and disappeared from the public and political debate (Morán Faúndes, 2013; Maira & Carrera, 2019; Lamadrid & Benitt, 2019). In addition, the ‘political interest in introducing legal reform on abortion was virtually nonexistent’ (Maira et al., 2019: 123). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, the topic was repoliticised by feminists demanding both a social de-stigmatisation and a legal decriminalisation of abortion.Footnote 7

One key event that resulted in great street mobilisations in 2008 was an attempt by right-wing conservatives to prohibit, or seriously limit, the distribution of the ‘morning-after pill’ (emergency contraceptive pill) (Maira, 2010; Brito et al., 2012). Other milestones for the feminist struggle at this time were the opening of a support hotline (Línea Aborto Chile), providing information about clandestine abortions in order to make such an experience as safe as possible (Casas & Vivaldi, 2014; Maira & Carrera, 2019) and, in 2016, the campaign Miso pa’ Todas (Miso for Everyone) (Lamadrid & Benitt, 2019).Footnote 8 Parallel with such feminist mobilisations, no less than eleven bills seeking to liberalise the abortion law were presented in the Parliament between the early 2000s and 2012. They were all rejected.

When the bill behind the current Chilean jurisdiction (Ley 21.030) was approved in September 2017, abortion became legalised in three limited cases: (1) if the pregnant person’s life is in danger, (2) if there are foetal abnormalities incompatible with life, or (3) if the pregnancy is a result of rape. In each case, the law regulates how and by whom the legal and medical requirements should be confirmed, and, in the case of rape, it establishes up until which week an abortion can be performed (Ministerio de Salud, 2018). Before its final passage, the bill was discussed in the Congress, as well as tried in the Constitutional Court, for a total period of almost two and a half years.Footnote 9 During this process, conservative politicians and other anti-abortion advocates managed to incorporate adjustments of great importance, especially in terms of (institutional) conscientious objection. Further adjustments that challenge the implementation of the law were issued shortly after right-wing politician Sebastián Piñera took office in March 2018.Footnote 10

In its current shape, the law enables both individual healthcare staff and entire (private) healthcare institutions to claim ‘conscientious objector status’, thus refraining from providing abortion services.Footnote 11 Such a status, claimed by a high proportion of physicians,Footnote 12 in combination with poor information about legal abortions as well as a lack of trained health personnel forces (the relatively low proportion of) women entitled to an abortion to continue to terminate unwanted pregnancies in life-threatening ways (Montero & Villarroel, 2018; Maira et al., 2019). Thus, the legalisation of abortion in only three limited cases in no way responds to the feminist demand for an easy, legal, safe and free abortion for everyone (Maira & Carrera, 2019; Maira et al., 2019).

In the current era of rising anti-genderism and religious fundamentalism, feminist struggles for sexual and reproductive rights are facing challenges that go beyond the legality of abortion. One of these challenges is the anti-gender movements’ appropriation of feminist discourses, promoting themselves as ‘genuine advocates for women’s rights’ (Corredor, 2019: 629), as well as rearticulating feminist and queer theorisations of gendered hierarchies as a ‘dangerous ideology’ threatening the ‘natural’ hetero-cis-patriarchal order (Graff et al., 2019; Corredor, 2019). As discussed by researcher and activist Sonia Corrêa, the concept of ‘gender ideology’ is

an empty and adaptable signifier, encompassing a broad range of demands such as the right to abortion, sexual orientation, and gender identity, to diverse families, education in gender and sexuality, HIV prevention and sex work, a basic basket that can be easily adjusted to the conditions of each context. (Corrêa, 2017)

Due to the interpellation of Catholic, Evangelical and Pentecostal actors in political and public debates, Latin America has come to be a key arena for these anti-gender movements (Troncoso & Stutzin, 2019). In Chile, as well as in many other countries around the globe, religious organisations and institutions, in complicity with a conservative political and economic elite, relentlessly oppose any recognition of reproductive rights in general and extended access to abortion in particular (Vivaldi, 2019b; Barrientos, 2020). Nonetheless, the anti-gender movement in Chile is composed of a significant heterogeneity of actors whose ideological or religious roots are not necessarily alike. Some scholars call it a movement in which ‘religion and secularism merge’ in new ways (Vivaldi, 2019a: 210). Despite this heterogeneity, what they do have in common is that ‘antagonism towards feminism constitutes both a key element of their value system and a political strategy’ (Troncoso & Stutzin, 2019: 14, my translation).

The widespread and public use of anti-gender discourses in Chile dates back to 2016, with an intensification in 2017.Footnote 13 A recurrent utterance of anti-genderism is protests against initiatives to introduce compulsory and integral sexual education in Chilean schools. According to anti-gender advocates, such sexual education—based on ‘new gender theories’—is ideologised, thus constituting a form of state coercion in an area of children’s lives that should be fully controlled by parents (Barrientos, 2020: 27, 32). Apart from this, discourses about and against the ideology of gender have been particularly present in parliamentary debates about both the abortion law and the gender identity law.Footnote 14

When debating the current legislation of abortion, anti-gender advocates articulated their arguments against abortion from a ‘pro-life’ standpointFootnote 15 as well as through the appropriation of a human rights discourse: ‘while defending the principle of life as the cornerstone of human rights, conservatives have invoked the foetus as the symbol of the innocent being that the international community should protect’ (Vivaldi, 2019a: 43). One example of such an attempt to humanise and individualise the foetus is when the spokesperson of Chile es vida argued that it was regrettable to see how organisations supporting the bill seemed to care only for the rights of already-born women, while neglecting the rights of the (potentially female) foetus (Barrientos, 2020: 40).Footnote 16 Such an objection positions the rights of women and the rights of foetuses as oppositional, and obscures the fact that the foetus’s life is ‘inseparable from the physical and mental well-being of the woman of whose body it is a part’ (Cornell 1995: 32, cited in Hurst, 2021: 4).

However, as indicated above, a discursive shift has taken place within the anti-gender, anti-abortion movements: from pro-life to pro-woman (see, for instance, Saurette & Gordon, 2015; Corredor, 2019; Mason, 2019). In Chile, this shift is characterised by an increased victimisation of the pregnant woman, portraying her as in need of protection and support from the state. Moreover, women who undergo an abortion are depicted as victims of ‘the most radical and violent machismo’, since men, it is said, use abortions to escape unsought consequences of their sexual satisfaction (i.e. unwanted pregnancies and the responsibility of fatherhood) (Vivaldi, 2019a: 169). Paradoxically, such a discursive shift takes place when anti-abortionists recurrently connect abortion to the torture and disappearances that took place during the military regime, thus portraying women as child-murderers rather than victims: ‘The strategy is clear: to mobilise negative feelings against the abortionist movement by comparing the violations of human rights by the State during the dictatorship with the violation of the rights of the foetus in abortions’ (Vivaldi, 2019a: 160).

Gendered Biopolitics and the Embodied Territory

The theoretical framework of this chapter follows a feminist trajectory of biopolitical administration and regulation of human life in general and of the female and feminised body in particular. Biopolitics, as first discussed by Michel Foucault, refers to how various techniques of institutional power regulate and administrate the population in terms of, for example, health, hygiene, morbidity and mortality, as well as birth rates and longevity (see, for instance, Foucault, 1990, 2008). As such, biopolitics is ‘a power regime centred upon life itself’ (Nygren et al., 2016: 50). New biopolitical techniques have emerged with neoliberal governance; while originally centred upon the separation of ‘normal’ and ‘pathological’, neoliberal biopolitics is centred upon—among other things—the regulation of individual choices (Nygren et al., 2016).

Since its earliest articulations, feminist scholars have engaged with, criticised and developed the biopolitical framework, arguing that gender and femininity—not only sexuality and reproduction—constitute the core of (gendered) biopolitics: ‘biopolitics rests as solidly on the production of gender categories as it does on the regulation of sexuality’ (Miller, 2015: 68).Footnote 17 For instance, the female body does not merely constitute the primary target for biopolitical regulations; ‘an awareness of female subjectivity is a prerequisite to divorcing biopolitical subjectivity from the rational, self-contained, individual of classical liberal theory’ (Miller, 2015: 69).

Furthermore, the feminist framework of biopolitics acknowledges the multiple histories of gendered bodies, as the form of expropriation and control of female procreation has been articulated differently depending on the class affiliation and racialisation of each body (Smith, 2005; Federici, 2020). Undoubtedly, gendered biopolitics has been one of the constitutive dimensions of colonial and heteropatriarchal capitalism (Yuval-Davis, 1997; Federici, 2004). In other words, it is a theoretical framework that recognises how our embodied existence is characterised by the incarnation of various inequality regimes. In relation to the issue of abortion, such acknowledgement is closely connected to the concept of reproductive justice.Footnote 18

In this chapter, the body is conceptualised as an embodied territory where life itself and the biopolitical administration of life meet; biopolitical power ‘is exercised over people’s bodies as territories’ (Segato, 2008: 204). The female and feminised body, traditionally conceptualised as belonging to a territory, ought to be conceptualised as a territory in and of itself (Segato, 2014):

The biopolitical concern with the production and administration of bodies and subjectivities brings forth a different territorial paradigm, in which the body of the population becomes the frame for the inscription of power. In this scenario, women’s bodies become themselves the territory of this inscription, especially due to their historical association with nature. (de Souza, 2019: 94)

Thus, the concept of cuerpo-territorio (body-territory or embodied territory), as developed by indigenous women/feminists in Abya Yala,Footnote 19 provides interesting insights when examining the feminist mobilisation around abortion in Chile. The concept articulates the body as the primary territory of encounter with the patriarchal, capitalist and colonial world, and, therefore, the primary territory to be defended (Tayor & Cabrapan Duarte, 2015; Cabnal, 2017; Federici, 2020). As explained by Lorena Cabnal, to defend the cuerpo-territorio involves ‘assuming the body as a historical territory in dispute with the ancestral and colonial patriarchal power, but at the same time conceive it as a vital space for the recovery of life’ (Cabnal, 2017: 100, my translation).

Embodied Performativity

Nevertheless, the female and feminised body is not only a site of (biopolitical) power inscription but a site of power contestation: ‘Social forces, while extremely powerful, do not completely determine women’s embodied existence and practices. Women, as embodied subjects, have agency and can use their bodies as tools and vehicles of resistance’ (Sutton, 2010: 5). Among the various ways in which bodies are embedded in and significant to political protests, the plurality of bodies is one (Sutton, 2010; Butler, 2015). When large groups of people—of bodies—assemble on the streets in order to protest, their bodily presence signifies on its own. In other words, following Judith Butler (2015), even if no specific demands are articulated, the fact that bodies gather constitutes in itself a form of collective and embodied political prerogative:

when bodies assemble on the street, in the square, or in other forms of public space (including virtual ones) they are exercising a plural and performative right to appear, one that asserts and instates the body in the midst of the political field, and which, in its expressive and signifying function, delivers a bodily demand for a more liveable set of economic, social, and political conditions no longer afflicted by induced forms of precarity. (Butler, 2015: 11)

While, in previous works, Butler’s notion of performativity was centred on the individual performance of gender and sexuality, the concept is now used to reflect upon the political: its (pre)conditions, possibilities and plurality. However, Butler is not erasing gender and sexuality from the equation but, rather, arguing that ‘it is not just gender and sexuality that are in some sense performative, but their political articulations and the claims made on their behalf’ (Butler, 2015: 57). Focusing on the entanglement of the body, performativity and precarity,Footnote 20 Butler discusses under which circumstances bodily acts become performative and whether such performativity implies pre-existing political agency. Defining performativity as ‘the process of being acted on and the conditions and possibilities for acting’ (Butler, 2015: 63), she suggests that it is not a question of possessing a certain power (agency) in order to act but, rather, a question of acting in order to claim such power. That is, even if no one can act without having the possibility of doing so, we are sometimes forced to act in order to create or maintain that possibility.

Finally, embodied performativity takes place between bodies, operating through ‘the reconstruction of plural forms of agency and social practices of resistances’ (Butler, 2015: 9). This idea that embodied performativity is necessarily a collective act, performed in the space between my body and the body of another, could thus perhaps be described as a process of acuerpamiento: to acuerpar is to resist with(in) one’s body the embodied injustices experienced by other bodies (Cabnal, 2017).

Revisiting the Case: A Methodological Reflection

My first encounter with the feminist mobilisations for reproductive rights in Chile was in 2016, when I was living in the city of Valparaíso. At that time, the bill regulating the decriminalisation of abortion on three grounds was being debated in the Congress (physically located in Valparaíso). In different places within or nearby the city there were huge banners with messages either supporting or opposing a modification of the then present law criminalising abortion in all cases.Footnote 21 When returning to Chile in August 2018 to commence Gender Studies at the University of Chile in Santiago, I met a city that for almost four months had been experiencing what both the media and the hegemonic discourse identified as a feminist revolution. Since May, students had been occupying several universities and high schools across the country as a protest against a sexist educational system that, among other things, grants impunity for professors and students accused of sexual harassment and abuse (see, for instance, Zerán, 2018; Reyes-Housholder & Roque, 2019).Footnote 22 These mobilisations appeared to have a catalytic effect on the feminist movement for reproductive rights, as the annual mobilisation for easy, safe and free abortion in July had gathered more than 50,000 attendees in the capital and another 50,000 across different cities throughout the country (Nodal, 2018). Almost everywhere I went, the pañuelos verdes (green scarves) were innumerable. To the eyes of an outsider, a lot had happened in a period of two years.

When I was asked to write a chapter for this anthology (in autumn 2020), another two years had passed since I visited Chile. During these years, the (bio)political arena on which the feminist mobilisations for reproductive rights take place had witnessed significant transformations. Since October 18, 2019, people in Chile had ‘relentlessly taken to the streets to demand not only higher pensions and salaries, and better health-care’ but also a new Constitution (Undurraga, 2020: 466).Footnote 23 The protests were repeatedly repressed by military police, costing more than thirty lives, hundreds of eye injuries and thousands of cases of human rights abuse (Badilla, 2020). After several months of uprisings, the Covid-19 pandemic took a grip of the country, forcing people off the streets and into quarantine. Undoubtedly, these developments are relevant when discussing the quest for abortion: feminists are fighting for the recognition of sexual and reproductive rights in the new Constitution (MAACH, 2020), at the same time as the already limited access to legal abortions decreased dramatically when other health services were prioritised due to the pandemic (Amarillo, 2020). Shortly after July 25, 2020, Coordinadora Feminista 8 de Marzo published a declaration announcing: ‘No pagaremos la crisis con nuestros cuerpos’ (‘Our bodies will not pay for this crisis’) (CF8M, 2020).

As mentioned in the introduction, this chapter is based on a study conducted in 2018–2019 (Persson, 2019), in which I analysed a range of performative and discursive strategies developed and used by four feminist organisations/collectives fighting for reproductive rights and justice in Chile: Mesa Acción por el Aborto en Chile, Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres Chile, Coordinadora Feministas en Lucha and Coordinadora Feminista 8 de Marzo.Footnote 24 These four organisations were included in my research due to their visibility during my stay in Santiago,Footnote 25 and due to their frequent articulation of the slogan of ‘aborto libre, (legal,) seguro y gratuito’. However, the Chilean feminist struggle for reproductive rights and justice is carried out by a range of organisations and activists, both inside and outside the metropolitan region, that all articulate various perspectives and ideas, constituting a multiplicity that my sample could never, and does not pretend to, represent. In the same way, my sample cannot fully represent the heterogeneity of opinions present within, or between, the four organisations whose strategies were analysed.

All four feminist organisations included in my case study employ(ed) a variety of strategies in their fight for free abortion. I focused primarily on discursive articulations, as well as on the performative use of the body, both in terms of how the body was conceptualised or described and in terms of how bodies became ‘signs that convey political meaning’ (Sutton, 2010: 172). I conducted the analysis using a form of discourse analysis based upon the operationalisation of Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) concepts of articulation, floating signifier and nodal points, identifying life, motherhood, the body and freedom (to mention a few) as key concepts in the struggle for abortion. I also discussed whether and how these strategies challenged the current glocal geopolitical climate, focusing on neocolonial and neoliberal capitalism.

My data included written, graphic and (audio)visual material published by the organisations on various social media platforms and their websites, thus capturing both statements and arguments as well as agendas and information about demonstrations or other street mobilisations. Virtual technologies and the internet constitute a major arena for contemporary feminist articulations,Footnote 26 by, among other things, enhancing the ability to mobilise on the street, as well as the possibilities to create an autonomous narrative about such street mobilisations. However, I do not argue that the feminist struggle for abortion in Chile is conducted primarily on the online arena. Parts of my data were also produced through participatory observations, conducted at a panel discussion about abortion in Chile and at a feminist encuentro (meeting) organised in order to articulate an agenda for the upcoming strike on International Women’s Day 2019.Footnote 27

Locating myself within the field of feminist epistemology and methodology, questions of power, reflexivity and social justice are central to my research. I consider the knowledge-building process to be one of creation or production, not of ‘discovery’ (Leavy, 2007: 91), and do not, for instance, seek to represent an ‘authentic’ narrative of the Chilean movement for reproductive rights. Inspired by Donna Haraway (1988: 589), I argue that all research is (or should be) grounded in ‘politics and epistemologies of location, positioning, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims’. In other words, the researcher’s ability as well as ambition to produce ‘true’ and ‘objective’ knowledge is inevitably an illusion. In my case, there is without doubt a tangible distance—in terms of both time and space—between me and the case that I analyse. For instance, neither the articulations and strategies developed by the organisations nor my understanding of feminist movements, reproductive rights and justice have remained constant since 2018. In the following sections, I will continue to revisit and re-actualise my discussion of the frames within which the feminist collectives situate their struggle, as well as of how their articulations and strategies repoliticise the embodied experience.

Feminist Frames: Aborto libre, (legal,) seguro y gratuito

In my research, the demands for aborto libre, (legal,) seguro y gratuito were identified as the frames within which the Chilean struggle for reproductive rights is organised. Even though each demand signifies on its own, they were understood as inherently intertwined; together they weave the right to decide if, where, when and how to have an abortion with broader issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights, as well as social justice.Footnote 28 As articulated through these demands, the quest for abortion is inevitably entangled with issues of economic injustice (class), since the consequences of the criminalisation of abortion are unequally distributed between different groups of women: ‘Las ricas se lo pagan, las pobres se desangran’ (‘The rich ones pay for it while the poor ones bleed out’) (MMM-C, 2018a).Footnote 29

Thus, through these four demands, the organisations position the struggle for reproductive rights in Chile outside the neoliberal and capitalist pro-choice paradigm, repeatedly challenged by both activists and scholars (see, e.g. Smith, 2005; Bloomer et al., 2019; Hurst, 2021). In fact, they challenge the neoliberal narrative that equals an unwanted pregnancy with an individual failure (Brown, 2016),Footnote 30 while simultaneously rejecting the notion of choice as unproblematic or universal. Thus, the struggle for abortion in Chile is not (or at least not only) a struggle for the individual right to choose, but a struggle for ensuring that all individuals have the possibility to choose: ‘in a capitalist system, choice is directly correlated to a person’s possession of resources. […] the choice paradigm, specifically the woman’s choice to have a baby or not, does not address the larger societal context’ (Ivanescu, 2013: 48). Hence, the idea that reproductive choices are made in a vacuum is dismissed, as the organisations argue that women (should) possess ‘inherent rights to their bodies regardless of their class standing’ (Smith, 2005: 134). Equally dismissed is the neoliberal governance that positions freedom of choice as its node of ruling and exempts the state ‘from any obligation to provide access to safe abortion […], sexual education and contraception’ (Vivaldi, 2019a: 35).

Consequently, the feminist struggle for abortion in Chile positions itself within the frames of reproductive justice, acknowledging the need for ‘an expanded vision of abortion access that exceeds the liberal notion of […] autonomous decision-makers whose choices are not constrained by misogyny, racism, colonialism, ableism, and/or classism’ (Hurst, 2021: 203), as well as addressing the historical inability of many feminists to demand ‘that no woman should be denied the right to have children because of the material conditions of their life’ (Federici, 2020: 28). The following statement by Mesa Acción por el Aborto en Chile (2019) is one example of how this standpoint is articulated: ‘La conquista de nuestros derechos será feminista o no será’ (‘The winning of our rights has to be feminist, or not at all’). Recognising that feminism, as a political project, necessarily exceeds women’s right to choose, the organisation’s argument aligns with that of Ross and Stolinger (2017, 124): ‘Invoking individual rights or even constitutional protection of those rights does not accomplish what could, in fact, be accomplished through altered power relations’.

While it can be fruitful to distinguish between the ability to choose and the perceived legitimacy of a choice when discussing the pro-choice paradigm, such distinction seems to disappear when anti-gender advocates in Chile question both the legitimacy of choosing abortion and ‘women’s very capacity to choose’ (Vivaldi, 2019a: 227). While not remarkable for its novelty, this strategy allows conservatives to create a link between women’s capacity to choose and material conditions (such as poverty), thus portraying ‘themselves as the defenders of women being materially and socially able to have children’ (Vivaldi, 2019a: 212). Paradoxically, then, both feminists and anti-gender advocates in Chile articulate socioeconomic precarity induced by neoliberalism as a threat to women’s reproductive ‘choices’. The roots, as well as purposes, of their articulations are, however, essentially different: while anti-abortionists seek to explain that a woman’s choice to abort is caused by this precarity (if she could, she would always choose to become a mother), feminists seek to explain that women’s reproductive rights cannot be reduced to a choice, as long as the possibility to choose is not available for everyone (see Bloomer et al., 2019).

The biopolitical implications of a neoliberal regime are visible not only when discussing the notion of choice but also in relation to the pro-life paradigm. As argued by Marina Martinez (2020: 587), ‘the politics of abortion in Chile’ can only be understood by considering ‘the potential link between neoliberalism and social-conservatism in general, and pro-life position in particular’. Ever since the neoliberal constitutionalism was implemented by the military regime in 1980, the ‘right to life’ has been inscribed in the Chilean Constitution,Footnote 31 posing a challenge for the feminist’s quest for abortion. To a large extent, this challenge is constituted by a differentiation between ‘life in general and the lives of living subjects’ in the constitutional articulation (Martinez, 2020: 599).Footnote 32 Such articulations are repeatedly questioned by the feminist organisations:

No defendemos la vida en abstracto, sino la vida digna, con derechos básicos garantizados [We do not defend life as an abstract idea, but a life of dignity, where basic rights are guaranteed]. (CFL, 2018b)

Apart from this, the constitutional ‘protection of life’ may also be one explanation as to why the fourth demand for legal has not been included in the feminist articulations to the same extent as the other three (libre, seguro y gratuito).Footnote 33 While resisting the criminalisation of abortion is, of course, central for feminists demanding free abortion, the question of (il)legality goes beyond such a dimension. It is indicative of an infected relationship between the feminist movement and the state, as well as of the fact that abortion legalisations always entail some level of biopolitical controlFootnote 34—especially if the Constitution treats the foetus ‘as an impersonal carrier of a good to be protected: life itself’ (Martinez, 2020: 602).

Feminist Strategies: Repoliticising the Embodied Experience

Having outlined the frames of the political articulations above, I will now discuss some of the feminist strategies identified in my previous study, ranging from resistance towards androcentrism and hetero-cis-sexism, the repoliticisation of language and the (female) body, and various rearticulations of abortion and motherhood to different forms of embodied actions.

Among these strategies, the use of gender-neutral and/or inclusive language was recurrent, exemplified by (for instance) the rejection or modification of masculine pronouns, widespread within the feminist movement in general. By replacing the second ‘o’ in the masculine conjugation of the pronoun todos (everyone) with either the letter ‘x’ or ‘e’, as in the following cases: ‘¡Hasta que todxs seamos libres!’ (‘Until everyone is free!’) (MMM-C, 2018b), ‘Todes invitades’ (‘Everyone is invited’) (CFL, 2018a), the organisations resist both linguistic androcentrismFootnote 35 and a binary theorisation of gender that limit our understanding of which bodies are affected by the criminalisation of abortion and, subsequently, participate in the struggle.

Another discursive strategy was the feminisation of masculine nouns, such as cuerpo (body): ‘Marchamos para exigir nuestro derecho exclusivo a decidir sobre nuestras cuerpas’ (‘We march in order to demand our exclusive right to decide over our bodies’) (MMM-C, 2018c). By inventing new ways in which to name the embodied (and gendered) existence, the organisations repoliticise language in general, as well as the female and feminised body in particular, and resist the invisibilising effect of linguistic androcentrism. The body is, however, conceptualised not only as gendered but also as a territory: ‘El primer territorio de autonomía es el cuerpo’ (‘The first territory of autonomy is the body’) (MMM-C, 2018d). This example allocates the articulation of the embodied territory (cuerpo-territorio), mentioned in the chapter’s theoretical section, at the centre of the organisations’ struggle for reproductive rights. By reconceptualising the body in this way, the activists, like Braidotti (2006), include environmental fields in their understanding of biopolitical subjectivity, as well as question any ‘distinction between something called “natural life” and something called “political life”’ (Miller, 2015: 70).

Micro-revolutions: Embodied Performativity

Another recurrent strategy employed by the organisations included in my study was the playful as well as political use of the word ‘abortion’ by its verb (‘abort’), thus articulating it as a collective and embodied practice of resistance:

Las mujeres abortamos el fascismo [We, the women, abort fascism].Footnote 36 (MMM-C, 2018e)

Abortamos este sistema y todas sus formas de dominación [We abort this system along with all its forms of domination]. (CFL, 2018b)

In the two examples above, abortion, as a floating signifier, is intertwined with various political articulations and filled with multiple meanings, connecting reproductive justice to social justice more generally. Conceptualising the uterus as an imaginary weapon in the struggle for social justice, the organisations articulate a critique of multiple oppressive power structures, without subordinating the issue of reproductive autonomy. Moreover, the articulations are examples of how ‘activists often use and deploy their bodies in specific ways to achieve their political goals’ (Sutton, 2010: 172).

Highlighting the quest for abortion in contexts or situations where it is not always expected appeared to be a multifaceted strategy (Fig. 5.2):

Fig. 5.2
A poster featuring foreign words inscribed on it, with a central illustration depicting two women standing back to back. The woman in the front raises his hand, while the one in the back holds a flag with inscriptions.

Mesa Acción por el Aborto en Chile encouraged their followers to use the pañuelo verde when dancing the cueca: ‘Este 18 bailamos con el pañuelo’ (‘This 18th, we dance with the scarves’)

Full size image

Each year on September 18, Fiestas Patrias are celebrated in commemoration of when the process towards independence from the Spanish colonists and, thus, the creation of the nation-state of Chile, was initiated. During such celebrations, it is common to dance the cueca—a traditional Chilean dance that involves the usage of a (normally white) scarf. The call made by Mesa Acción por el Aborto en Chile seeks to enhance the visibility of the feminist mobilisations for free abortion by politicising a space normally reserved for celebration (and nationalism). The strategy could, therefore, be understood as ‘calling for a revolution in daily life’ (Sternbach et al., 1992: 214). Another strategy seeking to visibilise (or, rather, ‘audibilise’) feminist abortion activism is the usage of the cacerolazo (saucepan) (Fig. 5.3):

Fig. 5.3
A poster displays foreign words written on it, accompanied by an illustration of two hands. The left hand holds a pan, while the right hand holds a spoon, forming an X-shape.

Coordinadora Feminista 8 de Marzo convoked a Cacerolazo (demonstration where the participants bang pots and pans to make noise) for September 28 (September 28 is when International Day for the Decriminalisation of Abortion is celebrated)

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Cacerolazo is a common strategy for political protest in Chile, as well as in other Latin American countries. It was first used by middle-class women during Salvador Allende’s government and, later, by people protesting the dictatorship of Pinochet (Garretón, 1989). Ever since, ‘pots and pans […] has been added to the symbolic repertoire of protest in Chile’ (Eckstein, 1989: 11).

Apart from positioning reproductive rights at the centre of the public agenda and challenging the taboo and stigma around abortion, what these last two strategies have in common are their performative dimensions. When feminists gather in the streets with pots and pans or to dance the cueca with the pañuerlo verde, these ‘embodied forms of actions […] signify in excess of whatever is said’ (Butler, 2015: 8). The activists, through their bodily presence, expand and/or re-conceptualise ‘the account of politics from which women [have been] naturally excluded, or included as objects to be secured, cared for, protected’ (de Souza, 2019: 98). Indeed, as mentioned earlier, such performativity is dependent on a plurality of bodies: the collective ‘composition of a common body […] a politics that makes the body of one woman the body of all’ (Gago, 2018: 661).

Motherhood: Challenged and Celebrated

As suggested in the theoretical discussion, gendered biopolitics, particularly the control of women’s bodies, has been, and continues to be, constitutive of global capitalism: ‘It is on women’s bodies—their sexuality, physical labour, reproductive capacities, skills, and sacrifice—that much of the globalizing economic apparatus has been set up’ (Sutton, 2010: 200–201). In the mid-nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, when Chile faced high rates of child mortality during the process of industrialisation, ‘the female reproductive body became functional to new development models that […] sought incorporation into a worldwide capitalist economy’ (Brito et al., 2012: 147–148). Under such circumstances, the criminalisation of abortion places the uterus ‘at the service of population increase and the production and accumulation of labor-power’ (Federici, 2004: 181). The subordinated position that (many) women occupy in a capitalist society, as a result of biopolitical administration of their sexuality and reproduction, is frequently legitimised by a patriarchal logic that upholds motherhood as an essential or inevitable part of womanhood (Brown, 2016; Kissling, 2017). The idea of ‘womanhood = motherhood’ is highly present in the Chilean sociocultural context, making ‘compulsory motherhood’ one of the most central issues for the feminist collectives figuring in my study:

La maternidad será deseada o no será [Motherhood should be voluntary or not at all]. (MMM-C, 2018f)

Decimos NO a la maternidad impuesta […] Luchamos contra la naturalización como máquinas reproductoras, felices, abnegadas, sacrificadas [We say NO to imposed motherhood […] We fight against the naturalisation [of women] as reproductive, happy, self-sacrificing machines]. (CF8M, 2019a)

By challenging ‘compulsory motherhood’, the organisations articulate similar concerns as the Chilean feminist movement MEMCH did in the 1930s.Footnote 37 MEMCH argued, among other things, that women should not be forced to have children by a State that does not provide them with the necessary means to care for these children, and that ‘abortion should be permitted for those women who cannot afford to have children in “good conditions”’ (Vivaldi, 2019a: 65). However, feminists struggling for reproductive rights in contemporary Chile do not only problematise how compulsory motherhood—caused by the criminalisation of abortion—disproportionately affects poor women, but also the fact that motherhood is (still) seen as one of the main traits of womanhood in the first place.Footnote 38 Abortion, thus, should be permitted for all women, including those with the material means to raise a child in ‘good conditions’, and motherhood should always be voluntary.

However, the organisations do not challenge—or dismiss—motherhood as a concept per se; they also celebrate it:

Defendemos y amamos una maternidad respetuosa. Parir, cuidar y criar junto a compañeras o compañeros es maravilloso, siempre que sea un hecho deseado y acompañado [We defend and love a respectful motherhood. Giving birth, caring for and raising (a child/children) collectively is wonderful, as long as it is a desired and accompanied event]. (CF8M, 2019a)

In this sense, motherhood is repoliticised and conceptualised in a similar way as by Federici (2020: 18): ‘maternity is not a destiny. But it is also not something to be programmatically avoided, as if it were the [only] cause of women’s misery and exploitation. No more than possessing a uterus or a breast is the capacity to give birth a curse’. That is, under different circumstances, motherhood would not need to be either compulsory or an embodied, economic curse but, rather, a possible practice of resistance: ‘the decision to have a child must also be seen as a refusal to allow capital’s planners to decide who is allowed to live and who instead must die or cannot even be born’ (Federici, 2020: 19).

Alongside such rearticulation of motherhood, the organisations also participate in the rearticulation of abortion as a historically situated and embodied practice. As shown by, among others, Federici (2004) and Kissling (2017), women all over the world have performed a range of practices to avoid or terminate unwanted pregnancies—some safer than others—for as long as we can remember. In the early phases of (colonial) capitalism, in the midst of a ‘demographic crisis’, women’s control over their reproduction was portrayed as a threat to primitive accumulation of labour, and was, subsequently, violently repressed (Federici, 2004). Therefore, one could argue, in a capitalist system, abortion is (could be) in itself a renunciative, if not revolutionary, act, albeit an unrecognised one (Federici, 2020). No matter what, as articulated by the Chilean feminists, abortion has always been, and continues to be, unstoppable:

Abortamos en revuelta, abortamos en pandemia, abortamos con y sin casa, abortamos migrando, abortamos en el campo y en la ciudad, abortamos juntas hace siglos, abortamos ayer, hoy y mañana también [We abort during revolt, we abort during pandemic, we abort with or without a home, we abort while migrating, we abort in the countryside and in the city, we’ve aborted together for centuries past, we abort yesterday, today and tomorrow as well]. (CF8M, 2020)

Conclusion

The struggle for free abortion in Chile is situated within the frames of easy, (legal,) safe and free—and, subsequently, outside of the binary scope of the pro-choice/pro-life dichotomy, as well as beyond the (il)legality of the procedure itself. The strategies used by the feminist collectives challenge the advancing and changing neoliberal, biopolitical regime and the multiple anti-feminist forces present in the country. Through a wide range of discursive and embodied performative strategies, the activists centre upon issues such as linguistic androcentrism, the material and symbolic body, reproductive rights and (in)justice, compulsory motherhood, economic inequalities and other oppressive power relations (such as fascism and racism). The feminist organisations perform macro- and micro-political work at the same time in order to resist the different levels of the gendered biopolitical regime: challenging the legal framework and the sociocultural stigma around abortion, the social-conservative image of womanhood, neoliberal governance, as well as the misogyny institutionalised in the healthcare system and anti-feminist forces. Hence, historical as well as present sociopolitical processes affect what the strategies aim to do or aim at (e.g. the constitutional ‘protection’ of life, reactionary and conservative anti-genderism and the high rates of inequality induced by the long-lasting neoliberal ‘experiment’). When new challenges appear, so do new strategies of resistance. As previously mentioned, feminist articulations are central to the ongoing process towards a constitutional reform: a reform of great significance not only to the quest for abortion,Footnote 39 but to the quest for a radical democratisation of Chilean institutions and society.

The massive street mobilisations for reproductive rights and justice in Chile is one example of when bodies gather to exercise ‘a plural and performative right to appear’ (Butler, 2015: 11). Thus, Butler’s conceptualisation of embodied performativity and public protests offers a constructive approach when examining the repoliticisation of the female and feminised body, as well as ‘the role of materiality within a reframing of the political’ (de Souza, 2019: 98). By recentring the materiality of women’s bodies, these feminist mobilisations challenge the pseudo-universal right to appear on the streets as rational, disembodied political subjects:

it is no longer about bringing women to the heart of an already functioning political sphere, which already implicates a very specific gendered structure, in which the subject of speech must expunge the material and corporeal in search for the rational. Rather, contemporary feminist resistance has been demanding—and producing—a rearticulation of the political to account for the corporeal, the material, the situated, the epidermal—i.e. the racial, gendered, classed nature of all life. (de Souza, 2019: 100)

While being the focus of this chapter, the feminist mobilisations for reproductive rights and justice in Chile cannot be separated from the broader struggle for social justice. As discussed above, the frames within which the struggle for abortion is articulated consist of an awareness of the fact that, for example, ‘unless abortion laws are interconnected with a broader struggle for social justice, including the struggle against racism and classism, such laws will continue to be discriminatory’ (Hurst, 2021: 7). Hence, the commonly made mistake of not connecting ‘the struggle for abortion to the struggle to change the material conditions of women’s lives’ (Federici, 2020: 27) is not repeated. Instead, the feminist collectives included in my research participate in ‘the construction of a transnational articulation which no longer admits easy dualisms or the erasure of some claims in the name of others’ (de Souza, 2019: 96). In the process of such construction, it is crucial to acknowledge that ‘the rights for which we struggle are plural rights’, as well as that ‘we are but one population who has been and can be exposed to conditions of precarity’ (Butler, 2015: 66), two aspects that are at least partially touched upon in the following (recurrent) articulation made by Coordinadora Feminista 8 de Marzo (2019b):

Un feminismo de mayorías contra la precarización de la vida [A feminism for the majority, against the precarisation of life].

Coordinadora Feminista 8 de Marzo (CF8M) constitutes a feminist space from which multiple societies and organisations as well as independent activists articulate and mobilise resistance. Since 2018, they have organised annual encuentros where participants collectively formulate a common agenda and demands for the feminist strike on International Women’s Day, March 8.

Coordinadora Feministas en Lucha (CFL) is a platform aiming to create a collective space from which a plurality of feminist organisations and activists can voice and articulate their political practices, ideas and visions. One important focus has been to visibilise the problem of illegal abortions from an intersectional perspective.

Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres Chile (MMMC) is the national branch of an international network that brings together feminist organisations around the world working to eradicate poverty and gender-based violence. The Chilean organisation was born in 2007 and has participated in the annual mobilisation for aborto libre, seguro y gratuito since 2013.

Mesa Acción por el Aborto en Chile (MAACH) was started in 2015 and consists of several organisations and activists defending women’s human rights, as well as the rights of movements that fight for sexual and reproductive rights in Chile. Their main purpose is to generate and spread arguments for a decriminalisation of abortion in Chile.