We are a Latin American and Caribbean network of feminist and lesbofeminist organizations/collectives and networks that accompany women, girls and others who have abortions.
We are also a possibility of interregional alliance and a platform for collaboration between organizations, both in the exchange of knowledge and in the construction of information, evidence, systematization. We seek to be part of local and global advocacy, disputing the knowledge of colonial hegemonic medicine, learning and teaching each other about how to practice safe and feminist abortions.
We accompany in contexts where patriarchal-sexual violence is perpetuated. We raise our work in the midst of deep political, social and economic crises in the territories we inhabit, which are militarized and neoliberalized.
We base our strategies on the experiences of those who have abortions and recognize them as women, girls and beings with strengths and courage, even when they are alone in facing these situations.
We recognize the ancestral knowledge of the abortion genealogy and we know that pharmaceutical drugs are a recent invention compared to the millenary of abortion.
We accompany and give a special meaning to the experience of our lives and those we accompany. We also accompany and transform human relationships. With these experiences we are generating other ways of sustainability of our existences, which prefigure other possible worlds in the face of the precariousness that the system installs in us.
"The political way to accompany is respecting the life and health of women, not bureaucratizing abortions, with active listening, with face-to-face encounters. Loving accompaniment based on women's needs, not pity, on the basis of total respect for their decisions."
We are part of the feminist movements that advocate for legal abortion in our countries and our horizon is the decriminalization of abortion. Never again should abortion be considered a crime.
We want a free abortion, without grounds and without week limits.
We call upon the States to stop any attempt of persecution against the escorts.
Political Principles
Principle 1.
We are united by feminist ways of accompanying and understanding abortions, understanding the diversity and the different forms that each collective in each place develops.
We accompany with love and total respect for the autonomy of women and people with the capacity to have an abortion, making use of active listening, not bureaucratizing abortions, that is, without grounds, without deadlines, without adding obstacles.
Women are experts in their lives and are the protagonists of their abortion processes. We accompany them in a horizontal relationship based on their needs, recognizing their resources and their capacity for agency.
We assume abortion as an action of care for the life and health of women and people with the capacity to abort, as a daily practice that we seek to be done without fear, without guilt, without dependence and from pleasure.
Principle 2.
We recognize the experience of abortion as a situation crossed by the diverse realities in which women and people with the capacity to abort are immersed; therefore, understanding abortion from a social, sexual and reproductive justice perspective allows us to accompany from an intersectional perspective that prioritizes the needs of those people belonging to social sectors historically minorized in rights and/or in conditions of vulnerability.
Principle 3.
We recognize ourselves, together with the women and people with abortion capacity that we accompany, as producers of knowledge, making theory from practice. We question the medical hegemony based on the information we generate through the experiences of accompaniment.
We promote the right to information as a political tool that enables access to safe abortions and prioritizes autonomy over medical hegemony.
Principle 4.
We are committed to community building with the women and people with abortion capacity that we accompany. We believe that the experience of abortion can be lived in community, the work of the network strengthens a way of resisting together the system of domination and exploitation in which we live.
Regional Network Priorities.
In an exercise of collective dialogue and assembly, we defined the priorities of the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Network of Abortion Companions in the short and medium term.
These priorities can be summarized in three:
1) Strengthening of the Regional Network
This priority is related to strengthening the regional articulation that we are building, so that the Regional Network can become a daily reality in each of the territories where there are collectives/organizations/national networks that are part of it.
Being part of this Regional Network should allow us to develop joint strategies and collective response, understanding that this process is not unilateral but is based on the possibility that all of us who are part of the Network can contribute and have a sense of belonging.
2) Accompany us to accompany
This priority refers to generating spaces for exchange, joint learning and strengthening the capacities of all the local collectives/organizations/networks that make up the Regional Network, which will allow us to improve the way in which we accompany in our territories.
This priority also refers to accompanying, as a Regional Network, political and public advocacy actions in each country, when there are debates about the possibility of advancing or retreating on abortion.
It also refers to the process by which trust generates support, exchange, strength and the possibility of seeing in everyone's actions, our regional scope to guarantee abortions in each territory through each member collective.
3) Knowledge generation
From the Regional Network we want to be in regional and global decision-making spaces. Political spaces where knowledge related to abortion is being disputed and debated. For example, in the updates of the guidelines of the World Health Organization. This component refers to being able to generate:
- Joint publications
- Systematization of regional data on abortion
- Generation of evidence, from our daily practice as medical abortion escorts.
- Generation of knowledge that allows us to recover abortion as a natural and daily practice and to create a positive discourse around it.
Once we had held a dialogue and debate on the priorities of the Regional Network, we developed the mission and vision that will guide our actions in the long term:
Mission:
Our mission is to be a space for strengthening, exchange and articulation between the collectives/networks/organizations of abortion escorts in Latin America and the Caribbean, in order to agree, strengthen and improve the way in which we accompany medical abortion and at the same time strategically influence the debates for the decriminalization/legalization of abortion in each of our territories.
Vision:
Our vision is for Latin America and the Caribbean to be a territory where women and people with the capacity to have an abortion can do so with autonomy, accompanied by feminists who promote free abortion and accompany them from the standpoint of social justice, happiness, pleasure and joy.
Short-term priority actions:
From the debate held on the priorities at the 2020 Regional Meeting, we also identified the priority actions that, in the short term, within a period of two years, we want to carry out as a Regional Network. The Driving Group will be the structure in charge of promoting the implementation of these priority actions.
At the next Regional Meeting of the Network, an evaluation will be made of the fulfillment of what we proposed and new priority actions will be defined.
The following are the priority actions around which the work of the Regional Network will revolve from 2020 to 2022.
- Priority 1: Strengthening the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Network of Abortion Escorts
During these two years, this priority will work on the following priority actions:
- The construction of the Network's collective identity, which will allow us to position it both regionally and in each of the territories where there are members of the Network.
- Generation of internal communication channels, among the members of the Network, to improve communication among us.
- Improve referral strategies for women and others with abortion capacity among the countries where there are members of the Regional Network.
- Priority 2: Accompany us to accompany us
During these two years, this priority will work on the following priority actions:
- Generation of training spaces to strengthen knowledge about accompaniment in 2T and 3T.
- Generation of spaces for exchange and strengthening around the safety and holistic protection of the accompanying women.
- Accompanying political and public advocacy actions in each locality where there is a possibility of progress or threat of setbacks regarding abortion.
- Priority 3: Knowledge generation
At the 2020 Meeting, no priority actions were defined for this component in the short term, as it was decided that for these two years we would concentrate on strengthening the Regional Network and accompanying each other.
