Tuesday Seminar in Latin American Politics
Date and Time
Abortion Politics and Democratic Backsliding: Lessons from Latin America
Abortion is a polarizing political issue across the American continent, yet US-focused scholars seldom interrogate the consequences of abortion politics for democratic institutions. Latin America scholarship has done better. Moving beyond the typical US focus of explaining abortion liberalization or abortion politicization, Latin America scholarship investigates how conservative actors strategically isolate and amplify the antiabortion position as a means of consolidating alliances and deepening elite control over legislative and judicial institutions. More provocatively, this scholarship also suggests that elites use the unique liminal legality of the fetus to blur, and ultimately weaken, national commitments to legal and judicial equality, which powerfully facilitates democratic backsliding. We build these arguments by first comparing abortion politics over time and across the region, and then by focusing specifically on the cases of El Salvador, Peru, Argentina, and Colombia. We conclude that legal access to safe abortion is not only critical for the life, health, and human rights of women and girls around the world; it is also central for creating and maintaining healthy democracies.
Speaker
- Jocelyn Viterna, Codirector, SCANCOR at the Weatherhead Center; Faculty Associate; Harvard Academy Senior Scholar. Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology; Chair, Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University.
Moderator
- Steven Levitsky, Faculty Associate; Harvard Academy Senior Scholar. David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies, Department of Government; Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University.
Contact
Paola Ibarra
pibarra@fas.harvard.edu
This event is organized by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.