In every photo and video, you see the cries of joy, pain and fury of thousands of women celebrating in the STREETS chanting, “ya es ley” (Now it's the law) to the victory of their hard fought struggle against draconian, women hating laws! Millions of women in Colombia finally felt a heavy weight off their shoulders, and went to bed with assurance they no longer had to risk their lives seeking an illegal abortion. They now had access to legal and safe abortion up to 24 weeks.

On February 21, Colombia became the third Latin American country—joining Mexico and Argentina—to decriminalize abortion. Legalizing termination up to 24 weeks of pregnancy makes the policy one of the most progressive in Latin America. Colombia’s highest court also allows for three exceptions beyond that period: for reasons of health, if the pregnancy was the result of a crime committed against the mother, or malformation of the fetus. This decision represents an advance in the recognition of freedom and autonomy. This was a win by women in the STREETS determined to fight for legal abortion—to be treated and recognized as human beings.

A feminist who has been demonstrating in front of the courthouse steps for months said: “Today, after fighting in the courts and in the streets for years, we have won but we must now defend our victory in the court of public opinion.”

In Colombia, as with other regions where the majority of the population identifies as Roman Catholic, the ban on abortion has long been used to control women and subordinate them to men, forcing women to bear children against their will. In 2006, they overturned an absolute ban on abortion, allowing the abortion in cases of threat to a women’s life or health, fetal abnormality incompatible with life, and rape or incest. Despite this ruling, women endured degrading obstacles. Women were FORCED to seek out psychologists to find the woman qualified for an abortion on the ground that the pregnancy posed a risk to her mental well-being and then were sent from doctor to doctor, only to be given deceptive excuses as to why they couldn’t perform the abortion.

A 16-year-old recalled finding out she was pregnant just before starting classes at a university for the career she dreamed of. This was a pregnancy she did not want, nor planned. She took a common pill to self-induce an abortion and went to the hospital after experiencing unbearable pain. Below, she shares how she was terrorized by the medical staff:

All the time they treated me badly for having an abortion. What marked me the most was when the interns passed by and the doctor came and told everyone “well, this girl is the one who had an abortion.” They made me undress to see me and put me on stretchers with women whose babies came and they were there crying and the doctors comparing them to one.

To avoid being shamed by doctors and society and to avoid being reported, millions seek illegal abortions. Other women and teenagers desperate to terminate the pregnancy seek any means: drink potions or insert objects into their vaginas. When they find themselves in a life-threatening situation and end up in the hospital, instead of receiving proper treatment from health care providers, often they are reported to police. There is a risk of any woman who undergoes an abortion or the health personnel involved to be convicted and sentenced to 16 to 54 months of prison. So fearful of participating in a crime, medical staff often feel forced to report abortions to authorities. Figures indicate 400 women and those who help them are prosecuted every year in a country with an estimated 400,000 abortions performed each year, with fewer than 10 percent performed legally! Unsafe abortions were the country’s fourth leading cause of maternal mortality.

These were the appalling, inhuman conditions for millions of women and girls before Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruling on February 21, 2022.

Resistance in the Streets

In late 2020, women began taking to the streets, inspired by the Green Wave in Argentina—which got its name in 2018 after more than a million people, wearing green scarves, occupied the streets of Argentina to support abortion rights.  Argentina’s historic win reverberated and inspired women across Latin America with women wearing and waving green handkerchiefs from Chile to Mexico to show their solidarity.

In Colombia, decades of fighting to decriminalize abortion through Congress seemed a dead end solution, so they devised a new strategy intended to change the legal landscape and public opinion.

They wore the easily identifiable symbols—green handkerchiefs. They learned from lawyers in Mexico, adopted a song-and-dance performance similar to one in Chile. They had campaigns on social media, marched across the country, performed a song  in the streets and called on celebrities to openly support them. They had a radio station that targeted areas with limited connectivity. Public officials were being forced to declare a position, while the public in general picked a side by wearing scarves in public.

The right to abortion had become a social question.

The protests that led to the victory was a decades-long fight, which took a turn in recent years with women taking to the streets with SUSTAINED protest—not just a one-off, but they kept coming back to fight this out, uniting all kinds of broad forces with the demand of LEGAL ABORTION. Music festivals and people protesting and speaking filled the streets of Colombia.

It was a hard-fought victory, but abortion still has plenty of opponents, including the president who commented that abortion will become a contraception in place of a condom. But abortion rights activists insist on using the same tactic in other regions.

A New York Times article covering this reported that, “Nearly all of the activists interviewed said that Roe v. Wade had been a touchstone for them, leading them to believe that the legal system could be used to help women gain greater control over their lives. Many now struggled to understand why the United States appeared to be moving in the opposite direction.”

The article quoted an organizer: “‘This is a battle that is never completely won,’ Ms. Villareal advised her counterparts to the north. ‘You can’t let your guard down.’”

Roe v. Wade had been a seminal spark for many activists in Latin America. But as the U.S. faces the danger of this right bring gutted, activists in Latin America are relying on one another for strategy and organizing tactics and hope to now inspire people in the North to defend abortion rights. “It’s now an inspiration going south to north,” said Catalina Martínez Coral, a Colombian lawyer and activist. “We are going to inspire people in the United States to defend the rights set out in Roe v. Wade.”

Challenge to People in the U.S

There are lessons to learn from women in Latin America!

First and foremost, the fight must be taken to the STREETS in SUSTAINED protest, not just a one-day symbolic protest. You can see the impact the protests in different countries have on each other and the interconnection as they work together and learn from each other. In an imperialist country like the U.S., if we can beat back the fascist Supreme Court from gutting abortion rights by millions of women taking to the streets, imagine the inspiration and impact it would have on women all over the world as it did when Roe v. Wade was won or how Argentina sparked a Green Wave movement across Latin America. We have a huge responsibility to the people of the world to stop the Supreme Court from reversing Roe v. Wade.

If we don’t, this could reverberate even in countries like Argentina, Mexico and Colombia where the gains are still fragile and have the potential of being reversed. Millions of women in Latin America not only are depending on us, they have put a challenge to us all.

What will you do?

Will you remain in solitude, maybe screaming within your four walls, waiting for a savior that will never come, continue to listen to lying politicians or the “women’s movement” misleading you to the chambers of female enslavement, OR will you join the revcoms or RiseUp4AbortionRights.org in the STREETS in SUSTAINED protest demanding: Forced Motherhood Is Female Enslavement / Abortion On Demand And Without Apology? And for revcoms fighting for an actual revolution, the fight to finally and fully uproot the oppression of women is a decisive driving force in carrying forward the all-out revolution, to emancipate all of humanity. We call on you to join us, join the Revolution Club. Read the Points of Attention, and email us to join if you agree.