The Compañera Network 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 Compañera Network 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 have an abortion are experts in their lives and are the protagonists of their abortion processes. We accompany from a horizontal relationship, based on the needs of those who will have an 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 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.
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.
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.
The Compañera Network 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 linking groups, as well as the possibility of holding a meeting that would bring together abortion escorts from all over the region.
Samsara, Ibis Reproductive Health and Women Help Women convened the Second Global Safe Abortion Hotline Meeting (GHM) in Bali, Indonesia. At that meeting, several organizations of escorts from Latin America came together and we decided to hold a first meeting of escort groups from Latin America and the Caribbean, in order to create a regional network of escorts.
We met in Chile to materialize our dreams, in this meeting we decided to form the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Network of abortion escorts.
We met in Lima, Peru, to collectively build our mission, vision, principles and priorities that define our future actions. At this meeting, the Network was formed by 21 groups from 15 countries. We hope that more groups of companions will join us along the way.
The Network achieves a collective identity. Naming ourselves as Red Compañera means to accompany each other and embrace life, we are accomplices between friends and strangers, from one hemisphere to another, we are companions.
Red Compañera Feminista.
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