A “green tide”. This is how the unstoppable movement to fight for the right to abortion was described in Argentina, which resulted in its legalization on December 30, 2020, after more than thirty years of combat. Scarves, flags, T-shirts, banners, posters, sequins: green has become, in a few years, the symbolic color of pro-choice activism, in the South American country and in the rest of the subcontinent, where the abortion is still largely criminalized. This time, it is in the United States that the green tide is about to break.
The American feminist movement is indeed calling for demonstrations on Saturday, May 14, to defend the right to abortion in the face of the possibility that the Supreme Court will overturn the Roe judgment. vs. Wade of 1973 which authorizes voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG). Setpoint : “Dress in green!” »
“It is a source of great pride, personal and collective, that green is now being taken up in the United States, says Marta Alanis, founder of the Argentine branch of the American Catholics for the Right to Decide association. Before, the United States landed in Latin America to bring us dictatorships, military bases and poverty. Today, the Latin American green tide is arriving in the United States to contribute to the liberation of women. »
A green scarf as a “symbol of hope”
This 73-year-old woman is at the origin of the symbolism of green scarves. These made their appearance in Argentina in 2003. That year the 18are National women’s meetings in Rosario, 300 kilometers north of Buenos Aires. An event that has taken place every year since 1986 in a different city in the country. For the first time, the right to abortion is one of the main demands. Marta Alanis suggests adopting a rallying symbol: a green scarf.
A scarf reminiscent of the white kerchief used by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, these Argentinian women who have been fighting since 1977 to find their children who disappeared during the dictatorship (1976-1983). And green” as a symbol of hope, health, life”, explains Marta Alanis. And a snub to the anti-abortionists who declare themselves “pro-life”. The scarf is then a simple piece of fabric cut in a triangle, with, in yellow, the mention “right to decide”.
It is distributed to participants in the meetings, who use it during the closing event of the event. Two years later, the civil society collective was born, which was behind the first bill debated in Congress in 2018: the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion. It officially adopts the green scarf as its emblem, accompanied by the slogan: “Sex education to decide, contraceptives not to abort, legal abortion not to die”.
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