‘Conversations Outside The Cathedral’: The fight for abortion rights in Colombia

February 21 marked two years since the Colombian feminist movement achieved a historic victory: the decriminalization of abortion up to the 24th week of pregnancy, the longest period in Latin America.

A new book has just been published in Spanish, to tell the story of this triumph: Conversations Outside The Cathedral (Penguin Random House), playing on the title of Mario Vargas Llosa’s innovative novel, Conversation in The Cathedral (1969).

“One thing that happens to many of us feminists is that we work and fight… but we’re not putting together a log for history,” admits Ana Cristina González Vélez — a doctor and pioneer of the Just Cause movement — in her interview for the book. “I think men have been more aware of the value of narrating [such historical events] and that’s a shame,” she adds.

It’s time to put together the log, fight for a place in history and tell the feat better. As Argentine novelist Claudia Piñeiro describes it, this is a book about “the memory of the Colombian green tide.”

Conversations Outside The Cathedral is a book of interviews that journalist Laila Abu Shihab has put together, alongside González and her closest colleague, Cristina Villarreal. For years, Villarreal ran one of the few safe centers for women seeking abortions in Bogotá: Oriéntame (“guide me”).

“Cristina and I partnered together a lot… [she] from the perspective of [reproductive] services, [while I was] closely linked the feminist movement and advocacy. We were like two faces on one body,” González jokes, describing herself and Villareal.

The book includes conversations with activists, lawyers, legislators, reggaeton singers and famous actresses who were all fundamental to the victory. There are some men here and there, but the bulk of the interviewees are women. The diverse chorus describes the long road to victory: defeats, strategies, unexpected turns, debates, divisions, betrayals. But along the way, there was also an exceptional degree of solidarity… a feminist way of working that was “collective and went against egos and vanities,” the journalist writes.

The first thing that Conversations Outside The Cathedral tries to do is give credit to those who rarely get any. For example, the book interviews university professor and sociologist Lucero Zamudio, who led the first ambitious study on abortion in Colombia in 1994, which revealed that induced abortion was the second-biggest cause of maternal mortality. “That study was never repeated — [there was never any document] of that magnitude and with that depth,” González affirms.

Another person included in the book is Iván Marulanda Gómez, a former senator who tried to get the right to abortion included in the Colombian Constitution of 1991. “Friends, it’s the right of Colombian women to give birth to children as a result of love and commitment… and it’s the right of Colombia’s children to be born surrounded by love and protection,” Marulanda told his colleagues in the Constituent Assembly. His motion was ultimately defeated: 25 votes in favor, 40 against, three abstentions. Congress has since voted on several initiatives to either decriminalize or legalize abortion. None have succeeded.

There are no protagonists in the fight for the right to abortion, but there are certainly key characters. There’s Mónica Roa, a lawyer who, in 2006, managed to get abortion decriminalized in three cases. Or Sandra Mazo, who’s committed to ending the guilt of abortion by leading the organization Catholics for the Right to Choose. For Cristina Villarreal, however, the key person was her father: Jorge Villarreal Mejía, a gynecologist who started a medical movement in favor of family planning. He founded Oriéntame in 1977. “I learned everything with my father,” his daughter explains. She’s of the leaders of the Just Cause movement, as well as the movement that preceded it: the Board for the Life and Health of Women.

The book also deals with uncomfortable conversations. For instance, there were tensions that emerged among feminists after Roa’s victory in 2006, either because of what they perceived as her excessive media attention, or because of her strategy: rather than trying to get abortion decriminalized across the board, she sought exemptions from the law in three cases. “They criticized us and said that what we asked for was very little… only crumbs of justice,” Roa recalls.

The women on the Board for the Life and Health of Women aren’t afraid of engaging in increasingly complicated debates. They struggle, for example, with how to regulate the right to abortion when there’s a malformation of the fetus, because “any effort in this regard reinforces stereotypes and aggravates discrimination against people with disabilities,” González notes.

“There was a time when we decided that, every month, or every two months — I don’t remember very well — we would choose a topic for discussion, to ask each other uncomfortable questions,” Villareal says. “One of those issues was the [high level of abortions] in the case of female fetuses in India. At first, that generates a very strong reaction.”

Conversations Outside the Cathedral aims to document the epic battle, but also to warn the unsuspecting. For instance, two years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the ruling that had guaranteed women the right to abortion for decades. In Argentina, the new government of President Javier Milei is also promising to remove abortion rights. And, in Colombia, the so-called “pro-life” groups (González Vélez and Villarreal ask that they be identified more accurately as “anti-rights” groups) continue to seek their victory against the right to abortion by getting court rulings overturned. Within the feminist movement, victory cannot be completely achieved, because the fight is always shifting.

“I don’t know if one day — in a few decades, I hope — this conversation will seem very strange to [the next generations]. It will seem incomprehensible to them that abortion was a crime,” ponders one of the interviewees in the book. “I’m convinced that there’s no moment when the fight ends,” another woman notes. For now, the conversations continue.

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