{"id":3939,"date":"2020-12-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=143711"},"modified":"2020-12-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-26T00:00:00","slug":"indigenous-women-explain-whats-at-stake-in-argentinas-abortion-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/26\/indigenous-women-explain-whats-at-stake-in-argentinas-abortion-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Indigenous women explain what\u2019s at stake in Argentina\u2019s abortion debate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cIn my town, we die of malnutrition and there are no water wells. How do we talk about sexual rights when they aren\u2019t even recognised? The hospital where I now work existed when I was a child. There has never been a legal termination there,\u201d Gea says, even in cases that would fall into the allowed exceptions. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhy? Because the local people don\u2019t even know they have the right to request them. So the hospital doesn\u2019t even have to deny the right,\u201d Gea says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pure fantasy,\u201d she adds, \u201cto believe that once abortion is legal, everything will be solved. We obviously want it to be legal. But first you need to reform the healthcare system, and get the church and the patriarchy out of the heads of medical staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Argentina is officially a secular state. But Mapuche activist and social psychologist Irma Caup\u00e1n Perriot, from the Indigenous Women’s Movement for Good Living<\/a>, says that religious institutions are powerful opponents to sexual and reproductive rights.<\/p>\n \u201cThe church represses, codifies, decides and constrains. We still cannot speak freely. It has to do with centuries of violence, oppression, invisibility\u201d, she says. <\/p>\n Her own history has been marked by these challenges. \u201cMy biological mother gave birth to a stillborn and buried it in her backyard as an ancestral ritual, but for that reason she went to jail. She was then raped in prison, and I was born. At no time was she entitled to anything. She was poor, she was indigenous, she was a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n Indigenous women, Caup\u00e1n Perriot says, \u201care disrespected even when giving birth. Violence and genocide are carried out in our bodies. Our sisters don’t have translators. Whenthey go to an [outpatient facility], nobody understands their language, and they are just left and not helped. They are dismissed as ‘indians’, as if they weren\u2019t people.\u201d<\/p>\n