The Red Compañera is a space for the regional articulation of feminist and lesbofeminist organizations, networks and collectives that accompany women, girls and others to have an abortion in a safe, caring and free from all forms of violence. We are 21 groups from 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Our political way of accompanying abortions is respecting the life and health of women and people with the capacity to abort. We give quick and adequate responses to the diverse contexts of those who need an abortion, taking into account their experience and needs, with total respect for their decisions, and recognizing their autonomy and strength.
We dispute the knowledge of colonial hegemonic medicine and produce knowledge among ourselves, on how we accompany careful and feminist abortions.
Our horizon is the total decriminalization of abortion, that is why we fight for free abortion, without grounds and without limits of weeks, we also call upon the States to stop any attempt of persecution against escorts, women and people with the capacity to have an abortion.
We want abortion to never again be considered a crime.
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.
The Red Compañera debates, dialogues and collectively builds the political foundations that sustain it. The principles that accompany our gathering and networking are:
We are united by feminist ways of accompanying and understanding abortions, understanding the different ways of accompanying that each group that makes up the Network, in each country, is developing.
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, without bureaucratizing abortions, that is to say, without grounds, without deadlines, without adding obstacles.
We affirm that women and people with the capacity to abort are experts in their own lives and the protagonists of their abortion processes. We provide support through a horizontal relationship, based on the needs of the person seeking abortion, recognizing their own 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.
We recognize the experience of abortion as one shaped by the diverse realities in which women and people with the capacity to abort are immersed. Therefore, understanding abortion through the lens of social, sexual, and reproductive justice allows us to provide support from an intersectional perspective that prioritizes the needs of those belonging to social sectors historically marginalized in terms of rights and/or living in conditions of vulnerability.
We recognize ourselves, along with the women and people with abortion capacity whom we accompany, as knowledge producers—creating theory from practice. We challenge medical hegemony based on the information we generate through our accompaniment experiences.
We promote the right to information as a political tool that enables access to safe abortions and prioritizes autonomy over medical hegemony.
We are committed to building community with the women and people with abortion capacity whom we accompany. We believe that the experience of abortion can be lived collectively. The work of the Network strengthens a way of resisting together the system of domination and exploitation in which we live.
The Red Compañera is the result of a process of feminist encounters and complicities. We meet from all corners of the region and we combine our diverse and complex ways of being and doing feminism. We are united by our desire to accompany abortions, we are united by our desire to change everything.
In Ecuador, a first meeting of accompaniment lines and networks in the region was held. In this meeting we met several groups of accompaniers for the first time, it was the space in which we met and recognized each other, and we began to think about the possibility of grouping and joining together regionally.
During the 14th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting, in a space convened outside the official program, abortion escorts from Chile, Argentina and Brazil reaffirmed the importance of building connections between groups, as well as the possibility of holding a meeting that would bring together abortion accompaniment collectives from across the region.
Samsara, Ibis Reproductive Health, and Women Help Women convened the Second Global Safe Abortion Hotline Meeting (GHM) in Bali, Indonesia. During that gathering, several abortion accompaniment groups from Latin America came together and decided to organize the first meeting of abortion accompaniment collectives from Latin America and the Caribbean, with the goal of creating a regional network of accompaniers.
We met in Chile to make our dreams a reality. During this meeting, we decided to create the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Network of Abortion Accompaniment Groups.
We met in Lima, Peru, to collectively build our mission, vision, principles, and priorities that will guide our future actions. During this gathering, the Network was officially formed by 21 groups from 15 countries. We hope that more abortion accompaniment collectives will join us along the way.
The Network embraces a collective identity. To call ourselves Red Compañera is to commit to accompaniment and to life itself. We are accomplices—among friends and strangers, from one hemisphere to another—we are companions.
Red Compañera Feminista.
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