Gender agenda in MERCOSUR: achievements and challenges. What happens with sexual and reproduction rights?

Abstract

The progresses that the feminist and organized women's movements achieved in terms of rights are evident in the current context. In the last twenty-five years in Latin American countries is possible to point out important milestones that demonstrate it, among them, the laws of quotas that were approved during the nineties as well as, in the first decade of the 21st century, the laws concerning Violence against women and / or Equal Opportunity Programs (EOP). However, there is a clear limit to the treatment of women's sexual and reproductive rights, specifically, the right to voluntarily interrupt a pregnancy, with the exception, as we will see, of the Uruguayan case which in 2012 legalizes the practice. The hypothesis of this work argues that although the feminist movement has achieved the conquest of numerous rights in political and social terms, there is still a great debt of Latin American democracies with sexual and reproductive rights. Therefore, what we will address in this article will be to identify the present situation of the gender agenda and the Voluntary and Legal Interruption of Pregnancy in the States members of MERCOSUR (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) in order to get an approximation of the limits and challenges encountered when dealing with and guaranteeing sexual and reproductive rights.