CLACAI 2023 Regional Conference "Persisting for change: abortion is our right".was held in Panama City on June 22 and 23. We would like to share some impressions of Compañera Network members who participated in this space for exchange and visibility, to reaffirm the importance of abortion escorts in feminist activism and in the global movement for safe abortion.
The testimonials we collected from Yanis accompanist in Venezuela and Ana Vera (Las Comadres, Ecuador) allow us to value different elements that make up what we understand by feminist accompaniment of abortions: the safety and care involved in self-managed abortions in the hands of activist networks, self-managed abortion, the essence of accompaniment, away from the various forms of violence perpetuated by the health system, among other issues. Therein lies the need to provide loving, feminist, caring alternatives, free from discrimination and all forms of capitalist, racist and patriarchal violence to those who decide to have an abortion.
Testimonials from CLACAI 2023 Regional Conference
A-CLACAI (Latin American Consortium Against Unsafe Abortion) is a space that brings together health professionals, journalists, lawyers and abortion counselors, precisely to think from a regional perspective, action strategies to advance in the framework of reproductive rights, specifically the issue of abortion.
Y-The participation of the accompanying organizations in the conference is fundamental to deepen the conditions that guarantee access to safe abortion for the population. In the context of social and political struggle that the Latin American region is experiencing against a neoliberal model that only produces more poverty, injustice and inequality. The conference manages to be a space of unity in diversity, of models that guarantee access. What we, the companions, propose is the creation of models, decolonial, anti-racist and class-based ways and routes. From experience, it is the most efficient way to eradicate unsafe abortion practices.
Y-It is important that those who accompany us continue to participate in the conference, not only by listening, but also by amplifying. To get to know different models of supply, research and knowledge production. Almost all of them had as a reference the organizations of accompaniers, the social movements. Social organizations are the political subject of the region, which tensions history and produces changes.The conference intends to persist in change, can give greater visibility to our praxis, making safe abortion available to millions.
A-The role of the Compañera Network is to position the work of accompaniers.Because it is such a diverse space, there are different positions on self-managed abortion. It has taken years of work to position abortion accompaniment as one of the most important strategies within feminisms, not only to decriminalize and guarantee access, but also to effectively give abortion back to women and the people who experience it.as a vital experience and at the same time begin to de-medicalize its concrete practice.
A-So, these spaces are important for Red Compa for many reasons, to generate alliances, to meet new people, and also to be able to think about and influence regional strategies for legal reform and strategic legal litigation. I believe that dialogue is fundamental to build joint strategies, which allow us to propose to the self-managed abortion as a fundamental alternativeThe company's work in the area of legal reform, which should be considered in the lobbying of our colleagues who are more involved in the whole issue of legal reform, but also in strategic litigation. To avoid legal changes that later become restrictive of abortion.
Y-In synthesis, I believe that the accompaniment organizations are the ones that guarantee that there is an anti-racist, anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist approach to accessing a safe abortion. Because accessing safe abortion in a privatized model does not provide total wellbeing."
A-The role of the accompaniers, in the first place, is to speak out about what abortion implies for specific women. Because we We accompany these women from different places than health professionals.This allows us to have another experience about accompaniment, about what is experienced, about what is at stake, about the meaning of abortion, it is extremely important.
A-We put into the debate the possibility of the self-managed and accompanied abortion at all times, without limits. By moving the limits that other social groups have on the subject, we move forward, not only in discourse, but also in concrete practices and in the imaginaries of the people with whom we share these spaces.
A-Of course, we are tense and tense because we come to bring a proposal that is absolutely radical, which is to give back to women the possibility of making this decision without the assistance of health professionals, without the opinion of lawyers, lawyers, but with the greatest possible freedom and the greatest possible autonomy, accompanied by us. We debate the whole possibility of self-managed abortion at different times, not only in the first trimester, already recognized by the WHO, but also in the second trimester. Thinking about abortions without limits, a much more radical discourse and practice, which goes beyond the State, is at the limit of legality, because we are also interested in disputing these meanings, such as stigma, in order to effectively build another world and another possibility.
A-We participated in several of the main tables, we have managed to build a place, a specific role. The issue of self-managed abortion is one of the most important issues in the region; it is an issue that was born from the hand of abortion escorts. In this sense, it is relevant to dispute the spaces, as well as to make these spaces become more and more radical. Indeed, we must consider that when we talk about abortions, we must put women and the different ways in which they decide to terminate these pregnancies at the center.
