International Prize for the fight for legal abortion …

She was married fifty years ago to the church, with Luis, her life partner, who continues to accompany her. In her activism, she combines the definition of Catholic and feminist. Last night, Marta Alanís, founder of Catholics for the Right to Decide (CSD) in Argentina and promoter of the National Campaign for the Right to Abortion, received in New York the Joan B. Dunlop Award, awarded by the International Coalition for Women's Health (IWHC), for its "tireless work for badual and reproductive rights and the struggle for social justice". At the end of her speech, with that soft but convincing voice with which the mountains move, Alanis said: "This will be the law", alluding to the phrase, converted into a militant hashtag in favor of sanctioning it. a legal reform in Congress guaranteeing the legal termination of pregnancy in Argentina.

The awards ceremony took place at the IWHC annual gala, an institution that stands out worldwide for promoting policies related to badual and reproductive health and the rights of women, youth, girls and adolescents, in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. CDD has been working with IWHC for more than a decade on different projects in Argentina and at the regional level, Alanis told this newspaper.

"Marta Alanis has been at the forefront of the women's movement for decades and is an integral part of the fight for the right to abortion," she said. Page | 12 the president, Françoise Girard, shortly before the start of the ceremony. "We are proud to honor and celebrate the unbeatable impetus of the green tide in Argentina," he added.

The name of the award recalls an activist with a long history of badual rights, born in London and first president of the IWHC.

"We prove that we can be Catholic and at the same time disagree with those masculine and hierarchical discourses that claim to obey and send us to silence." We resigned our faith, we found the Catholic identity and we acted politically our dissent on matters of badual morality. more deeply in society and in churches, "said Alanis at the award ceremony, about the work of the CDD." I was very excited.

If Alanis is distinguished by its ability to promote collective processes and the framework of transversal alliances. Under these premises has played in the National Campaign for the Right to Abortion, since its inception. Alanis was one of the ideologues because the green handkerchief was the symbol of legal abortion demand in 2003 at the XVIII National Women's Meeting held in Rosario. The following year, in Mendoza, would be defined the birth of the campaign, which was finally launched publicly on May 28, 2005.

Alanis also encouraged the creation of the Southern Women's Fund, from which economic support is given to projects promoted by women, bads, transvestites and transgender people in the region as part of the expansion of rights for a decade. He was born in Cañada de Gómez, province of Santa Fe. With Luis, he had three children and a daughter. Today, they have two little girls. Social and political activist in his youth, he was in exile in Nicaragua and returned home with his family in 1984. Originally from a Catholic home, he was in his teens against abortion.

– And when did you change your mind? – asked Page | 12.

– My position has been reaffirmed for a while until life shows me the realities of women who have interrupted their pregnancies because of various situations and have started having contradictions. One day, I went in the wake of a girl, a friend's sister, they saw her at home, humble and very curious family. I wanted to know why a girl was dead and someone cautiously told me not to ask, do not insist. they do not want to say, because they are ashamed, "the girl suffered an abortion and everything went wrong". This episode happened but I told this story. Then I joined very progressive and more open people, I started living in Córdoba in 1968 and I managed to have some flexibility in this subject. I joined social and political activism, my fellow Catholics also came from parish work influenced by Third World priests and the central theme was revolution.

– And what happened next?

– I could start badually with the protection of contraceptive pills and I could more or less decide when to have my children. During these years, I learned that several compañeras had suffered voluntary abortions and that there was a climate of tolerance for these situations, although many activists agitated the idea that we had to have a lot of children and that the discourses on badual morality did not differ too much from the hierarchy. Catholic There were criteria for the sharing of household activities, the education of sons and daughters, although the division of labor based on badual difference was not completely overcome, some partners being more predisposed than others . It depended on them and our bargaining power. In Nicaragua, when I was already in exile, in 1980, I accompanied a partner for the first time to abort, which I did in solidarity and with the absolute conviction that she had enough reasons and enough maturity to make decisions.

– In those years, were we talking about the right to abortion?

– During these years of militancy, exile and revolutions, little has been said about baduality, a certain pragmatism has prevailed. The abortion was not talked about, but if it was necessary or if a woman had decided that it was done, but discreetly, it was not relying on the concept of badual politics, neither the right to decide nor the right to one's own body. However, Cuba, which was our north, had guaranteed access to reproductive health and abortion, without hesitation, since the beginning of the revolutionary government.

– And what role did the Catholic Church play in your life?

There is no doubt that the influence of the Catholic Church on the leadership of popular organizations in Latin America during these years was considerable and that many of the leaders of that time had spent several years in seminaries to become priests . Many have opted for a militancy strongly influenced by the theology of liberation, which, while supporting the movements of social change for the impoverished majorities of our Latin America, has never thought about the role of women, their rights or to their desires. Women's activism was significant but there was no parity in the decision-making spaces. Women also did not identify with feminism and we did not demand parity.

– Have you ever had an abortion?

– Upon my return to the country, after exile, I experienced the experience of first-person abortion. And I made it convinced that it was an act of responsibility, of course, my partner was by my side and I was counting on the accompaniment of friends. This remains something for most women to do.