‘The world is looking at you,’ the actress Susan Sarandon informed Argentina’s Senate on Tuesday, ahead of its vote on an abortion bill. ‘Give women the right to choose!’ She may have been inspired by Amnesty International, who had taken out a full-page ad in the international New York Times to tell the Senate: ‘THE WORLD IS WATCHING’.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, after a 16-hour debate, the senators failed to do as they were told. The bill, which would have legalised abortion up to 14 weeks – and beyond in the case of disability or a threat to the mother’s health – was defeated by 38 votes to 31.
Sarandon and Amnesty were right, in a way. Abortion has become a global culture war: there are no purely national debates on the subject. When the US government cancelled abortion funding in January 2017, an international coalition, She Decides, immediately sprang up.
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