Demonstration for the right to abortion in Buenos Aires, February 19, 2020. RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP
A “green flood”. This is how the unstoppable movement for abortion rights in Argentina was described, which led to its legalization on December 30, 2020, after more than thirty years of struggle. Scarves, flags, T-shirts, banners, posters, sequins: in just a few years, green has become the symbol color of pro-choice activism in the South American country and the rest of the subcontinent, where abortion is still largely criminalized. This time it’s in the United States where the green tide breaks.
The American feminist movement is indeed calling for demonstrations on Saturday, May 14th to defend abortion rights in the face of the possibility that the Supreme Court will overturn the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling, which ruled out voluntary abortion ( IVG) allowed. The instruction: “Dress green! »
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“There is great personal and collective pride that green is now being taken up in the United States,” said Marta Alanis, founder of the Argentine branch of the American Catholic Association for the Right to Decide. Before that, the United States landed in Latin America to bring us dictatorships, military bases and poverty. Today, the Latin American green tide is reaching the United States to contribute to women’s liberation. »
Demonstration for abortion rights in Buenos Aires, December 30, 2020. VICTOR CAIVANO / AP
A green scarf as a “symbol of hope”
This 73-year-old woman is the origin of the green scarf symbolism. These first appeared in Argentina in 2003. This year the 18th National Women’s Meeting took place in Rosario, 300 kilometers north of Buenos Aires. An event that has been held in a different city in the country every year since 1986. For the first time, the right to abortion is one of the main demands. Marta Alanis suggests adopting a rally symbol: a green scarf.
A scarf reminiscent of the white kerchief of the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, these Argentine women who have been fighting since 1977 to find their children who disappeared during the dictatorship (1976-1983). And green “as a symbol of hope, health, life,” explains Marta Alanis. And a snub to anti-abortionists who declare themselves “pro-life.” The shawl is then a simple piece of fabric cut in a triangle with the note “Right to Decide” in yellow.
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It will be distributed to meeting attendees who will use it during the closing session of the event. Two years later, the civil society collective behind the first bill debated in Congress in 2018 was born: the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion. She officially adopts the green scarf as her emblem, accompanied by the slogan: “Decide sex education, contraceptive abortions, legal abortion don’t die”.
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