AbortoLegalYa [#Legal Abortion Now]. Digital activism for legal abortion in Argentina, 2018-2020

For the first time in Argentine history, a Bill on the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy was introduced in the National Congress (parliament) in 2018. The debate marked a turning point in the political agenda of Feminism at national and regional levels. Hitherto, most Feminist movements had focused their political action on street protests/camp-outs/occupations, training youth, sparking public debates and packing the political platforms of parties to advocate the legalisation of abortion. Although the Senate finally rejected the Bill in 2018, in 2020 Alberto Fernandez introduced a new Bill on the 17th of November 2020, which was passed by the Senate on the 30th of December. This paper first briefly summarises Argentina's Feminist movement's struggle to legalise abortion. To this end, we analyse the records and collaborative coverage by the media and civil society organisations in Argentina between 2018 and 2020. We focus on: how digital, social and political territories were 'occupied'; what Feminist practices were used to make the long-standing #AbortoLegalYa [#LegalAbortionNow] movement visible from different perspectives and tracks; what discourse and media strategies were used to put the issue in the limelight and to span the demands made by broad sectors of society. Finally, we focus on the digital activism carried out to cover the debate in social networks and various digital platforms, with special stress on real-time updates in the Spanish language Wikipedia entry between 2018 and 2020.