Ramiro Álvarez Ugarte, The Pro-Life Movement and the Fight for the Constitution in Argentina: Between Law and Transcendence, in Latin American Law Review, No. 6 (2021): 125-149
doi:10.29263/lar06.2021.06
Envío del trabajo: May 18, 2020
Aceptación del trabajo: Aug 30, 2020
The constitutional history of abortion in Argentina is long and complex. This paper overviews a small part of it: the way in which Catholic legal academia developed, since the early 1980s, constitutional arguments to dispute with the feminist camp the meaning of the Constitution. This process has two dimensions. One is linked to the intellectual history of Catholic ideas over reproduction, and how they were adapted to the peculiarities of Argentinean law. The other is related to the way in which these arguments formed the framing of the “pro life” movement in Argentina. Exploring this normative world reveals the “depth of field” with which social movement seeking constitutional change work with (Cover, 1983), and what is at stake when the battle is disputed in that terrain. This article explores what this means for constitutional theory.