The Women's Movement in Uruguay: A Decades-long Struggle for Legal Abortion - Inés M. Pousadela 1 Introduction This article explores the activism of the Uruguayan women’s movement in the pursuit of the legalisation of abortion. 2 The issue has been debated in this country for over 25 years. The debate has been especially intense since the turn of the century and particularly since 2002, when a Legalisation Bill was debated and passed in the Chamber of Deputies for the first time. However, the initiative was defeated in the Senate a year and half later. In the following pages the focus is specifically on the most recent process (not yet concluded), and more precisely on its two latest “rounds”, which took place after the left won the presidency in 2005. Tabaré Vázquez, the first Uruguayan President from the leftist Frente Amplio coalition party, had announced that he would veto any legislation legalising abortion. A Bill regarding the issue was presented by the Senators belonging to the President’s own party in June 2006. It was passed by the Senate in November 2007, approved with modifications by the House of Representatives in November 2008, and subsequently returned to the Senate, which turned it into law a week later. However, it was partially vetoed by the President on November 13 th , 2008. The Legislative Assembly was not able to overturn the veto; therefore, the parts of the law regarding abortion were discarded. A similar Bill was introduced in the Senate in September 2010, this time under the administration of José Mujica, also from the Frente Amplio, who had promised not to use his veto power against it. The process was extremely slow. The initiative was first debated in a Senate Committee in November of the following year, and was passed by the plenary meeting in December 2011, then sent to the House of Representatives’ Health Committee in February 2012. During the following months, the Frente Amplio found it increasingly difficult to gather enough votes to turn the initiative into law, which led to negotiations with legislators from other parties and eventually to the replacement of the original Bill with an alternative decriminalisation initiative, giving rise to major criticisms from the social movement. At the time of this report the process is far from being concluded; the new Bill, passed by the House by a difference of just one vote, has just been sent to the Senate for it to discuss it and turn it into law - a law that will most likely not satisfy anybody. This research work is based on information from primary and secondary sources as well as on the compilation of the experiences of its protagonists. The initial 20 years of debate (1985-2005) were covered using information contained in academic publications and reports produced by governmental entities and social organisations. The more recent process (that is, from 2004 on) was reconstructed 1 Ines Pousadela, ICD, Uruguay 2 Legalisation and decriminalisation are not the same thing, while the former treats abortion as a right that can be claimed before the State, the latter considers it merely a procedure that nobody can be punished for performing or undergoing. Both are, however, often confused in the debate. We use the former –not the latter- in the title of this Article because that is how the women’s movement’s demand os framed; however, both expressions are used alternatively throughout the text as long as that is what the participants in the process themselves do. Only by the end of the process the distinction itself was placed on the center stage, as a depenalisation alternative emerged that had better probabilities than the original Legalisation Bill for gathering the votes required for it to be turned into law. 1