Aborto Libre Y Gratuito: Luchemos Por La Maternidad Voluntaria [Free and Liberated Abortion: Fight for Voluntary Motherhood]

Mexico City: Coalición de Mujeres [Feministas Mexicanas] / Frente Nacional de Lucha por la Liberación y los Derechos de las Mujeres (FNALIDM), [1981]. Item #10286

Poster promoting a demonstration for free and legal abortion in Mexico, held in Mexico City in 1981.

The march was organized by two early feminist organizations in Mexico, the Coalición de Mujeres [Feministas Mexicanas], and the Frente Nacional de Lucha por la Liberación y los Derechos de las Mujeres (FNALIDM). 

The Coalición was founded in 1976 with the goal of legalizing abortion in Mexico. In September of 1977, the Coalición organized its second National Conference on Abortion, where members drafted a bill to decriminalize abortion. That December, the Coalición attempted to present the bill, the “Law of Voluntary Motherhood,” to the Cámara de Diputados, but no legislator would sponsor the bill. 

Formed on International Women’s Day in 1979; the FNALIDM included women from the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), student and labor groups from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), lesbian feminist groups, and others. Four years after the initial legislative attempt to legalize abortion, the Coalición joined forces with the FNALIDM to make another attempt. In 1981, the groups drafted and promulgated a bill to decriminalize abortion, hoping that the support of PCM legislators would push the bill into law. This bill also ultimately failed.

The repeated losses and resultant crackdown from the Church and state resulted in a “generalized demobilization” of the abortion rights movement, as described by feminist organizer Marta Lamas in the April 2009 issue of Nueva Sociedad. Momentum gone, the coalitions soon dissolved, and the voluntary motherhood campaign largely dissipated until the 1990s. Abortion would not be decriminalized across the country for another 40 years, following a Supreme Court decision in 2021. Very good, with horizontal fold line at center.

Price: $200.00