 Nicolas Susman, and we're back at Latin American Directions. And today we have the pleasure of having Vanessa Taza Castillo joining us for a very interesting discussion on abortion across the Americas. Vanessa is a Colombian lawyer and feminist activist. She's currently a fellow with the International Women's Rights Action Watch, Asia Pacific, and then activist at Siete Polas, a Colombian feminist activist collective. She co-founded. Vanessa, thank you very much, and welcome to Latin American Directions. Hi, Nicolas, and thank you so much for this fabulous invitation. I'm thrilled to be here and talk a little bit about abortion and feminism and everything related. Thank you so much. So Vanessa, let's start mapping a bit the situation. Abortion has been a very current topic in the Americas with a very strong movement in Latin America, and this week we're seeing a very strong movement in the U.S. with the League of Roe vs. Wade. Tell us a bit about this background, what's going on in Latin America, and how's the situation at the moment? Well, Latin America, as always, or at least right now, especially, you have good news and bad news everywhere, right? Because I think one of the lessons we're getting from Roe vs. Wade in the U.S. is that rights, liberties are never fully guaranteed, and you have to be always on the guard to protect them, to protect your rights, to defend them. So in Latin America, we're having good news and bad news, and the good part is that lately we've had a few better news or more good news than that one. And with this, I'm just talking about the cases of Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia, which have recently partly decriminalized or legalized abortion. It was Argentina that started that in 2018, but then it finally legalized abortion at the end of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic. And then Mexico did it last year, and then Colombia did it this year. So we've had three big wins, which I don't mean to overshadow what's been happening in other countries where abortion has been further criminalized. We have countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador passing very, very restrictive laws. The same as the U.S. It started with Texas last year passing this very restrictive bill, that restrictive abortion until the first six weeks of pregnancy. Other states in the U.S. have followed that example, and now we have the potential, almost imminent overturning of Roe v. Wade. So again, it's a very mixed feelings sort of scenario with some countries leading the way forward with very, very important setbacks. Right, and how could we explain this advances throughout the region? Are they related or are they unrelated? How does that go? They're absolutely related. And coming from Colombia, I think part of the Causa-Rusta movement, which was the movement that led the lawsuits that ended up in this landmark ruling by the Constitutional Court to criminalize an abortion until week 24. We totally learned from and adapted and included in the lessons we learned from Argentinian and Mexican, Canadian and Latin American activists in general. And a very specific example of this is that until I think 2018, the discussion about abortion in Colombia was very concentrated internally. And by elite, I mean, feminist organizations, lawyers, feminist lawyers and the state. The conversation was not a wide public conversation at all. And that started to happen after what happened in Argentina. So in 2018, there was an attempt to legalize abortion through Congress. And the way the Argentinians just massified the conversation about abortion. So we got images and videos of the streets of Buenos Aires with lots and lots of women with green handkerchief. And what happened there is what we saw is abortion became something of the public agenda. And not just the feminist and recognized longstanding activists, but everyone at the table was talking about abortion. From the youngest women on Instagram to the most renowned politicians and talk shows on the TV, everyone was talking about it. And that was something that happened just naturally or organically, that was the result of a realization that in order to make abortion happen or to legalize abortion, everyone, or the topic had to be part of the public agenda. And there had to be public awareness and public receptivity of the issue in order to put more pressure on government in Congress. And that's engendered what we call the green wave, the Maria verde in Spanish. And then it started the entire movement in Latin America. So after we saw that, and we saw the Maria verde, we even adopted the green handkerchief. So we use that in Colombia as well. And I think all over Latin America we've been using that, which started as a symbol of Argentina, but then it pretty much diffused all over the Latin American region. And we basically copied that in Colombia. So after 2018, we took the conversation about abortion to social media. Many, many feminist collectives were born and they tackled the issue directly to the point that we've ourselves had very massive women protests in front of the court for international women's day with very, very loud demands for protection of sexual and reproductive rights. And I think this happens in the same way in Mexico when it's been happening all over Latin America. We've seen the feminist movement being strengthened by different, by women and members from different ages, different disciplines, from social media activists, social media personalities, influencers, to politicians, just scientists and doctors and experts, everyone is welcomed and it has to be part of the movement. So it's entirely connected. I feel like the advances in one country necessarily have an impact on other countries and neighbors, both the setbacks as well and the advances, everything I think has an impact on neighbors in Latin America and the Americas generally. Right, right. And Vanessa, why now? Why now? And something that catches my attention is that during the last, I don't know, four, five years we've seen a turn to more conservative politics across a region, left or right, but conservative. And in the midst of this trend to the conservative specter of politics, we're seeing a lot of these advances. So my question is, why now? That is a great question. It's very paradoxical. I believe that what happened in Colombia and I would say that it's something that also happened in other regions where we've seen some progress and abortion is that we realized that we were just there for vias, right? So since 2016, I would say, when very, very conservative government rise in the US, very conservative right-wing movement, sorry, government in Europe as well and Asia all over the world. And I think that that just empowered a lot of anti-right movements and groups to push for the elimination of a lot of rights, including abortion, but not limited to abortion. Having these governments in place just empowered them and then we were there just to react. So that's what happened in 2018 for us, for example. We had to organize protests and strikes three times because three times anti-right activists sued or presented or filed lawsuits before the constitutional court or filed lawsuits to strike down regulations and laws. They were the one leading the battle. They were the one filing the lawsuit. And we were just there to react. We were just there to protest and go to the court in response to that we're just very, very reactive. And that's when we realized two things happened there. It's a mixture of law and politics, which I adore as well. We saw that our constitutional court in Colombia was rejecting and rejecting and rejecting all of their attempts. So we were, we gained this awareness of the importance and the significance of our court in our country. That's what showed us, okay, we have a court that is welcomed, that welcomes women's rights and women's bodily autonomy. Why aren't we harnessing that? Why is it that we're just reacting and not being more proactive in the defense of our rights? And that's when we said, we, there's a very fertile scenario here amid a wave of conservative governments. We ourselves, we have a progressive court. That's our battlefield, that has to be our battlefield. And that's when we decided to file our own lawsuit. We were not gonna react anymore. And I think that I have a very similar analysis can be made about Argentina. They knew their battlefield was not the court, but the Congress. And I feel like the feminist movement has just been realizing that we still have institutions that can be our battlefield and we can use them. So instead of just responding to whatever attempt anti-rights movement made, we decided to be proactive ourselves. And I think that's the result of precisely progressive rulings from courts and progressive laws from Congresses. Right, that's very interesting. And I think it fits rightly in the discussion they're having at the U.S. right now. And it's okay. We know that the court is probably striking down Roe v. Wade, right? Let's go to Congress, right? The Congress is not helping either. So what do we do? And what are the pros and cons of going through Congress or through the courts? Not only the States, of course I understand this is a country by country discussion, but overall what are the advantages of going through one of the two ways? I believe that right now, especially in the U.S., and I'm not an expert in the U.S. politics or law, but our analysis now is that there has to be, first of all, a strengthening of the feminist movement itself in the U.S., which has been, I believe the word is, it's just diffused a lot. And this is something we've been seeing even before Trump got into power. And it's how right after Roe v. Wade, anti-rights movement organize themselves. And the result is what is happening now, where progressive movements and feminist activists and the Democratic Party itself, they just stay still, so to speak, right? Instead of taking the active decision of defending and constantly protecting the rights and further or expand the protection, we see President Barack Obama saying that abortion is basically something that's too controversial. There's already Roe v. Wade. There's no need to prioritize any laws on abortion because that's basically there already. It's gained, it's a win, it's there, it's a victory, right? So I believe the first thing we have to do and one of the main lessons from all those processes is that we cannot just stay still anymore forever. Once we have a ruling from a court, we have to go to, that's what we have to do. We have a ruling from the court, but that's not the end of it. We ourselves have to go to the Congress. We have to go to regulatory authorities. We have to go to the health ministry. We have to go to the people. We're talking about social decriminalization because it's not just on state institutions. It's also with the people, right? Social imaginary. So I believe there's many setbacks or drawbacks of going through Congress, especially with the political situation in the US and seeing that the Democratic Party, which is the party that you would expect to put this thing in the agenda, it's not just divided, but there seems to be a lot of hesitation getting directly involved with the issue. Nobody wants to, nobody from this side or from the Democratic Party or the progressive sides or very few people want to engage directly with abortion rights, speak about it explicitly and explicitly pass bills. It's just something that it's happening right now because of the leak of the decision. But it's been a conversation that's been constantly postponed. So it has to go to Congress for sure. It also has to go through state law and state Congresses. It has to go everywhere, but I would just insist as well in the social movement itself. We can't just deposit everything. I mean, the state is necessary because it's the state that's gonna guarantee your rights to health and the infrastructure to be able to provide these services. But it's not just the state. We have to, and one lesson that I think Latin Americans can give to the US is that you don't do this without the public and the people and the movement and the strong movements and involving everybody in the cause. It's not just women or specific feminists. We have to have everybody on the conversation. So yeah, I mean, we have to just permeate, I guess, every institution possible, especially now that the court is, or at least in the US that the court is, has a majority of conservative justice. Right. And Vanessa, how do you engage with the public in countries such as ours, such as Latin American countries which have a, I wouldn't say a majority perhaps, but have a very strong and very vocal conservative sector, right? How do you make, I don't know, I would say a minority, but maybe an alternative claim, a conversation of all the people and how do you gather sufficient support to create pressure on decision makers, right? So they feel safe to make this decision and they say, this is the right choice to do at the moment without jeopardizing or legitimacy or authority and even our well-beings as individuals. Sure, that's a great question too. Our lesson in Columbia, what we saw is, you can't just, you have to make a few concessions in terms of the arguments that you're gonna use to convince people that abortion is necessary and it has to be protected. And there's two things that I would highlight that really have some power of bringing more people into the conversation and lowering the guard a little bit and being more receptive to abortion itself. The first is that in our speech, what we said is what we're looking for is that abortion, abortion should be regulated and abortion should definitely be a matter of law and regulation and control. It's just criminal law has nothing to do there. Let's just not send women to jail for doing this. Let's have a, let's look for alternatives. And then what we did is what we found out in many conversations we had with family members and friends and we tested this as many people that are against abortion still are not convinced about sending women to jail for that reason. So that would be our, I guess, our framing. It's like, abortion has to be regulated and there has to be a conversation at the level of the state. Let's just not do this using jail or criminal law. It shouldn't be a matter of criminal law. And usually we would say most women either, I mean, a huge proportion of women either have had an abortion before or know someone very close that has had one. Would you be in favor of sending that person to jail? Your friend, your mother, your aunt, someone that's close to you, would you like that? And I guess what I wanna say here is that when you take the conversations with personal and empathetic level, then the tone changes and the attitude changes. And there's another very important issue that we highlighted a lot in Colombia and I feel like it's also very present in the conversation in the US and in Latin America generally is the issue of inequality that traverses or that cross-cuts abortion issues. And it's that women, middle class and high class, women, rich women, white women, they're gonna get their abortions whether they say or claim they're in favor or against. The thing is, if women of color, indigenous women, poor women, they're gonna be the ones bearing the burden of making abortion a crime. So we would bring the issue of inequality to the conversation and say, this has a very clear group of women that are gonna suffer and they're already marginalized for many reasons so we can just further or exacerbate those burdens anymore. So I feel like those two approaches were very useful for us. I guess that's also context dependent but in a country that's so conservative, we were able to make our way through conservative groups and conservative friends and families with these two, I guess, tools. One, talking about inequality and the injustice of the issue and another one to talking about what the consequence should be and whether a jail wasn't a very harsh consequence for just a poor women that's been raped trying to decide over their life. Right, that's very interesting. Also something else we've seen in the region is that even in the victories we have, abortion has been regulated in very different ways, right? My question for you is, which is the end game? Which is the objective? Are you fine with these decisions? Are you aiming for something else? What's the objective of advocates for the right to abortion? Yes, the end game as an end goal is definitely to eliminate or strike down entirely the crime of abortion. So for now in Colombia, what we have is what we call a combination between a temporal and causal system. So we talk about two kinds of systems. The first is a temporal one, which is basically limiting abortion or allowing abortions until a certain number of weeks. And then the other system is the causal system which is basically identifying a few reasons or justifications under which you're able to get an abortion, no matter what stage your pregnancy is in. Before this year, what we had in Colombia was the second system, so we had three reasons for which women could get abortions in any stage of their pregnancies. And now we have a combination of the two. And the reason why there are not enough and that's what we found in Colombia. And it's, again, something you can see all over Latin America is that whether you have a limit of time or a condition in terms of the justification for abortion, hospitals and social services services and servants and providers are gonna find the way to use those requirements to not provide the service. So that's what we saw a lot in Colombia. We saw women that got to hospitals looking for an abortion that were sent to three or four or five other hospitals because they were always saying, this is not the place where you should go. We need to go to this other place that they would give you the service because of your membership to the public health system, your income, many reasons. We had also the case of women that would ask for an abortion because of physical health issues and doctors wouldn't provide the service because they found that the medical opinion of other doctors wasn't enough. So they would send women back and send them to look for other authorizations from other institutions or doctors that were qualified. We also saw the case of women that were looking for an abortion because they were raped and they weren't provided the service until the lawsuit was filed. And at times even they would deny the service until the process had reached a certain stage and the criminal process. So every time you have a temporal limit or a conditional limit, there is a way for the service to be denied to you. So that's why it's not enough. So what we have now, it's great. It's a very progressive system. We have in Columbia 24 weeks in other countries, we have 12, in other countries, there's no temporal limit at all. But that's the thing, limiting the right is always, it's limiting the right. In the end, you don't have full bodily autonomy. So that's the end game. Now, it doesn't mean that we're right now looking for, you know, that now that we have this ruling, we're already looking for the complete decriminalization because we understand that there's a process that has to go on. But that's the end game, you know, at last. Right. And Vanya, just to get a bit of the insight story, tell us about Kausa Husta, your experience, how was it like from the outside, you see the ruling, right? You see the media campaign, you think that that was great, that was very interesting, that was admirable. But how is it from within? How did it came to be? Yeah, just, I just want to know your experience, go beyond the movement and get into the person and know how it is. Oh, Kausa Husta is just one of the best things that has happened to me in the last year. Because, you know, it's a great group that we have of different women and feminists from different backgrounds and contexts and disciplines represented there. You know, I am a lawyer and the reason I got into Kausa Husta was not because I was a lawyer, it was basically because, you know, I was part of a digital media collective. We did all social media things, right? But we're working together with women such as Ana Cristina Gonzalez or Florent Thomas, which are, you know, renowned feminists have been working on this for years, for decades, even. And we see people from all over the country. So we get in our meetings and we always have a lot of fun. There's always a lot of very interesting discussions. If I don't mean to say that, you know, because we have a common goal, it's not difficult, and there are no disagreements, you know, but we, in the end, we know we have an end goal and we always find the way to go through or resolve our issues and differences to find a way forward. So we work at any other, I guess, movement. We have a communications department. We have an incident or strategy department. We have a group of lawyers. We all communicate amongst each other. We use lots of groups. You know, we have sessions where we just go to work then we take some time off and just go for a beer after work and, you know, we have a lot of fun. We party. There was a huge party when the decision came out. It was amazing. And yeah, it's just, again, just learning that if you really want to achieve things, you have to invite many different people and audiences. And that's exactly what we try to do. Right. And then it just is a final reflection and this is not only about abortion. We could say this about any human rights issue that relates to the individual, but what's the relationship between the right to abortion and the future of democracy? Oh, wow. I just feel that you cannot have a full democracy. It's a part of your population doesn't have the right to decide over their own bodies and life projects. And that's the end of it. If you have, if you're imposing motherhood and women that don't want to be mothers then you don't have three individuals who can take free decisions and participate in social life and cultural life according to what they want to do and who they are. You're imposing certain standards and certain life standards to people and you don't have a democracy when that happens. Right. So I do think that we just, you know, something we tend to say is like, we're second class women or second class people unless we have full autonomy over our bodies and our lives. And the way to do that is just legalize an abortion. If you want a democracy, a full real democracy just give women and give people the right to decide over their own bodies and take the choices they want for their lives. I think that's a wonderful way to close today's episode Vanessa. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. Let's hope the fight ends one day. Thank you so much for your audience. We'll see each other in two weeks this West Latin American directions. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.