FEMINISM BY OTHER MEANS: REFRAMING THE ABORTION DEBATE IN PORTUGAL

On February 11, 2007, Portugal posed a referendum aimed at decriminalizing abortion and making it free on demand during the first ten weeks of pregnancy—the referendum passed. There was a noticeable shift in the arguments of the Yes campaign between the referendums in 1998 and 2007. Feminist discourse discussing women’s rights to control their own bodies was intentionally and explicitly excluded from the 2007 Yes campaigns after being blamed for the failure of the first referendum, even though the Yes campaigns lost by less than a 1% margin in 1998. The point is not that moderation necessarily won the referendum, but rather that extreme moderation was taken as a precaution against losing the referendum. I will discuss this decision from within the Portuguese feminist movement, analyze why certain discourses were used and others silenced, and suggest that the decision to excise traditional feminist discourse from the movement was a strategy used by feminists to achieve the goal of abortion reform. [Portugal,

we going to use and I recall we had a huge fight" (personal interview, 2007).Celina argued that abortion was about women, so the campaign needed feminist language such as the right to choose.Other attendants adamantly rejected this proposal, worrying that voters would turn against a campaign that utilized a feminist approach.
They favored using two other arguments: women being imprisoned for having abortions, and clandestine abortion as an issue of public health.Celina agreed with the importance of these reasons, calling it "coherent, deep speech", but resisted cutting out what she considered to be the bottom line: "the dignity of women and the right to choose" (personal interview, 2007).Attendants of the meeting decided that keeping women out of jail would be the primary argument.Celina countered that women being sent to jail for abortion was about not being able to choose, which stemmed from sexism.
But there was urgency in the notion that this was Portugal's last chance to reform abortion laws.Celina was not the only person voicing the need for more feminist arguments, yet like most other activists she yielded to the restrictions of the campaign.She agreed that moderation might be the condition to win the referendum: "we had to have a more moderate speech because people are afraid of women and of feminism and of too much power to women."But her compliance was not without reservations: "It got moderated, maybe too much... We'll see in the future what we lost with it, as a society and as a feminist movement" (personal interview, 2007).
Celina's recounting of the restricted language of the 2007 campaign was not exaggerated.Walking through Lisbon in the weeks before the referendum, every Yes billboard and sign showed young women in negative situations: behind prison bars, being escorted from a building (presumably a courthouse) with their faces under a coat, or cowering on the floor with their heads in their hands.These images were accompanied by phrases containing the words "humiliation", "shame", "responsibility" and "dignity"; the first two words referred to the problems society and women faced (respectively), and the following two referred to the objectives that society and women desired (also respectively).The word escolha (choice) was only seen in graffiti, marginalized activism that was not supported by the Yes campaign, and the doctor's movimento (approved movement group), which had the power of medical authority and a discourse devoid of feminist rhetoric to justify the word's use.This article has two main objectives: discussing a contextualized history of Portuguese abortion politics; and analyzing the arguments that shaped the 2007 Yes campaign.I will discuss the agreement to moderate the campaign messages from within the Portuguese feminist movement, where the abortion reform movement was born and where silenced objection to moderation was sometimes felt.Activists like Celina responded in ways I anticipated, venting frustration and anxiety about the pressure to moderate.But it was not the case that non-feminists were silencing feminists, or even that feminists were completely silencing themselves.They were selectively vocal, each campaigner conforming to the discourse deemed acceptable by the movimentos-that were comprised, in noteworthy part, by feminists.
Feminist arguments that overlapped with the concerns of politicians or public health officials could be used without being decried as wholly feminist.These arguments were relevant to both feminist and non-feminist members of society.

HISTORY
This section is intended to provide the reader with a comprehensive history of the Portuguese abortion reform movement.This historical framework is intended to contextualize my analysis of campaign moderation, which will follow this section.This section is comprised of four smaller sections: "Estado Novo & 25 de Abril" begins with a basic definition of a woman's role during fascism, identifies the feminist beginnings of the abortion reform movement after the 25 de Abril, and discusses how the first trials directed the arguments used by reformers.Next, "A Luta Continua" chronicles the integration of abortion reform into the political agenda, introduces the publication of testimonies of women who had experienced clandestine abortion, and summarizes the conception and loss of the 1998 referendum.Then, "Trials" introduces the abortion trials, the media stir they created and the visit of Women on Waves, and summarizes the launch and success of the 2007 referendum.Finally, "1998 versus 2007" discusses the main rhetorical and strategic differences between the two referendums.

ESTADO NOVO & 25 DE ABRIL
The 1939 civil code of Salazar's fascist Estado Novo confined a woman's role in Portuguese society to mother and subservient wife (Tavares, 2000).One month later, a woman from Porto died from a clandestine abortion, influencing Parliament to hold another debate and vote on abortion reform.PCP and JS revised the projected law to allow abortion on demand in the first 10 weeks as opposed to the first 12 weeks (Tavares 2004).On February 5, 1998, the projected law was debated and ultimately approved.A few hours later, however, a compromise between the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic was revealed: the issue would be put to referendum.Campaigns were launched and at the end of June, the abortion reforms were voted down by a 1 percent margin, with an abstention rate of 68 percent.The results were upheld and the law remained the same (Freire & Baum;2003a, 2003b).The argument of the woman's right to her body doesn't settle the issue and it makes the issue an almost impossible discussion.The advantage of the discourse that we had during the campaign is that it was a wise discourse for most people.It was directed to dealing with a problem everybody knew was there and not to an ideological debate on the role of the female in society.So there was an interesting paradox in the Yes campaign which was the fact that women's and feminist movements were strongly involved in one of the most important feminist causes, especially here in Portugal, but they didn't have what we could call a traditional feminist discourse on the subject (personal interview).

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Though he identifies personally as a feminist, José took no objection to cutting many feminist concerns out of the campaign.He called moderation an "old debate" that was settled before the referendum, and said that even feminists who were unconvinced that feminist language lost the 1998 referendum acknowledged that moderation was the "best strategic option" (personal interview, 2007).According to José, including feminist discourse would make the referendum into an ideological debate that would jeopardize the outcome.To him, the main objective was winning the referendum, and engaging a conservative nation in a discussion of women's role in society would not be effective.
Like José, most campaigners decided that winning the referendum was the ultimate goal, and that convincing the undecided was the best strategy.Once identified as impractical and even dangerous, feminist arguments and goals were marginalized in favor of a culturally resonant discourse.Using the framing theories of sociologist Myra Marx Ferree, feminist arguments and goals were marginalized: Framing is an interactive process that is inherently about inclusion and exclusion of ideas, so the choice of what ideas "the" movement endorses sets boundaries to identify what kind of language would appeal to more people.A good framing for this argument can be found in the work of sociologists Robert Benford and David Snow, who contend "opposing framing activity can affect a movement's framings… by frequently forcing it to develop and elaborate prognoses more clearly than otherwise might have been the case" (2000: 617).Yes activists saw that the arguments of public health and imprisonment were "powerful rhetorical element[s] for change because they [carried] strong emotional force without threatening core values, myths, or characterizations" (Condit, 1990: 27).In this way, the moderated form of the Yes campaign was constructed to appeal to a wide spectrum of Portuguese society holding diverse ideological identities by tapping into strong commonly held beliefs.

ANALYZING TRIALS AND REVERSING SHAME
How did trials become one of the leading arguments for abortion reform in the 2007 campaign?
First of all, the coverage of the trials has such massive appeal because prison is culturally repulsive to Portuguese citizens.Secondly, trials were highly publicized by feminists who were looking to engage the nation with more reasons for reform, which kept the abortion debate alive after the loss of the 1998 referendum.Thirdly, this media coverage created sympathy in Portuguese society for the women being tried, and connected the debate to citizens on a more personal level.Fourthly, Portugal was denounced internationally for the government's treatment of women who had undergone abortion.Finally, the shame experienced the women who were tried for abortion was reversed onto the Portuguese government.This section is intended to explore the cultural significance that prison holds for Portuguese citizens, analyze the impact of media coverage of the trials on the public perception of abortion's criminalization, and theorize how shame was relocated from the women being tried to the country responsible for the trials.
Trials were cited time and again in the media and personal interviews as being the main reason abortion reform continued to matter after the 1998 referendum.The discourse of women's imprisonment was effective because the trials were part of the society's collective conscience.The media, "made it clear that women were being held in prison for abortion and that's a big issue concerning Portuguese way of thinking, we really think prison is bad.Even the most conservative ones, they don't want women to go to jail" (Fabíola, personal interview).What is here characterized as a national repulsion for imprisonment may be related to decades of military rule in Portugal, and buy a pill for 25 euros" 14 (Ribeiro & Fonseca,46).The abortive medication misoprostol is also easier than ever to access through the Internet.If a woman visits the Women on Waves website, for example, she will immediately see a link to licensed doctors who will consult the woman online and then ship the medications to her home.This service is for women living in countries where abortion is illegal or difficult to obtain.Even so, as discussed earlier, self-performing medical abortion can be dangerous.According to the Direcção-Geral de Saúde (Surgeon General), 3,216 women were hospitalized in 2005 for complications with partial abortions after self-medicating with misoprostol (Ribeiro & Fonseca,46).
Medicos Pela Escolha (Doctors For Choice-MPE) described such cases in the 2007 campaign.Like the other movements, Medicos began by discussing the abortion trials that women were subjected to, but their focus shifted to clandestine abortion towards the end of the campaign.Pedro, a doctor active in the movement, attributed this change to the repetitive use of trial arguments, and to the No campaign response suggesting that abortion be decriminalized but remain illegal.The Yes response, Pedro said, was to begin "talking about non-legal abortion, women that were dying in Portugal; we brought cases, real cases of women that died of non-legal abortion in Portugal.We talked about the numbers" (personal interview, 2007).Sérgio, a journalist who acted as the publicist for Medicos, reiterated this shift: "It was very crude, but this is it.Dead women.Let's get cases, let's show them this girl died [at] 13 or 16 years old because she had an illegal abortion" (personal interview, 2007).Pictures of the women who had died began to appear on campaign websites and in popular magazines.ts for abortion, and debatable to every other Portuguese citizen.This argument is so common in the history of Portuguese feminism as to often be identified as the feminist argument, because it was seen as having no overlap with other concerns.In contrast, clandestine abortion and prosecution were feminist concerns that overlapped in the public health and political sectors, and so were not labeled as feminist by voters.
Mariana, a university researcher and single mother, was dissuaded from discussing her own experiences with undesired pregnancy, which she compared to "being raped because being pregnant subtly tears you apart.I didn't own my body for like 9 months, and the first 5 were hell (...) if I had been forced to keep [an unwanted] child it would be a violent thing for me.But I could never say that" (personal interview, 2007).The perceived violence of unwanted pregnancy is a common feminist argument (Petchesky, 1990(Petchesky, , 1995)), which helps to explain why it was not allowed in the campaign.By avoiding the argument of a woman's right to her body, campaigners identified Portugal as a country where a woman's role is not normally defined in feminist terms, and where patriarchal values still have influence.
The second claim equating criminalization with social backwardness was actually part of the early stages of the 2007 Yes campaign, where the word "modernization" was used by Prime Minister Sócrates when discussing, "[t]he reforms that are necessary to go forward in modernizing Portugal" 15 (Público, 2006).It was immediately clear to me that most of my informants found the word offensive, as evidenced by their displeased expressions when questioned about the term.Tiago, a member of JPS, explained that the discussions of "modernization" stopped being used early on in the campaign because it lost votes, particularly with older citizens whose senses of nationalism were offended by the suggestion that they were making this policy change in order to imitate other countries.Tiago clarified that the referendum was, "a mirror of modernization, not a weapon for it.It doesn't lead to advance, it leads to social and psychological freedom.It's a reflection of people's minds, it doesn't change people's minds" (personal interview, 2007).In other words, any changes Portugal makes are the result of a deeper societal growth, and while this may be interpreted as modernization, it is the result, not the objective.Others, like professor and MCR activist Maria, "believe that in terms of government, it wasn't a real concern about women, or a real concern about those that are going to jail and the health care system, it was political pressure.
So they could say, 'now, like almost all European countries, we do not punish abortion'" (personal interview, 2007).She agreed with the majority of my informants that this argument did not influence voters, but maintained that it greatly influenced politicians.control.This practical side of abortion is not dramatic in addition to being non-resonant, and it doesn't fit with the rhetoric of the campaign whose main objective was saving women from undesirable fates (death and prison).
In addition to these arguments, certain words and groups of people were excluded from the discourse as well.Mariana was one of the few campaigners who spoke at length about who and what was excluded from the campaign.Silenced language took on new meaning through the process of campaigning: "The fact that we couldn't use the word feminism, the fact that we could use the word sex made them sound like dirty words to people whom they weren't dirty before" (personal interview, 2007).
Pregnancy was not discussed as a result of sex as the campaign selectively rejected biological and social connections to abortion that would not resonate with conservative voters.Sexuality was not discussed, and GLBT issues were only discussed in nonapproved activism, such as the campaigning done by Panteras Rosa.
Sex and feminism were not the only subjects to elicit feelings of taboo.Mariana "wasn't considered a proper mom to speak because [she is] deviant (...) anything that was against the conservative status quo was considered bad (...) As a mother [she] was disregarded because [she] thought about having an abortion" (personal interview, 2007).Speakers considered deviant -such as feminists, GLBT, and single mothers -were silenced in any way that related to those identities.These identity silences were frustrating and even painful to many campaigners.However, feminists, GLBT, and single mothers were very active in the campaign, even if not expressing those roles, and were in great part responsible for the success of the referendum.

CONCLUSION
As opposed to the first referendum in 1998, feminist language was strictly moderated and non-resonant concerns were marginalized in the 2007 Yes campaign.The arguments that abortion reform would stop women from being tried and imprisoned, and stop women from dying of clandestine abortions were deemed resonant and used exclusively by the campaign movimentos.The public nature of the abortion trials caused the shame of the women's exposure to be reversed onto the Portuguese post-referendum meeting of Jovens Pelo Sim and interviewing one member, my access to the world of referendum campaigns temporarily ended as the movimentos disbanded and activists returned to their own activist groups.I was reintroduced a few weeks later when I received an email from Claudia who, in addition to being a feminist activist in UMAR (Union for Active and Responding Women), was also a virtual secretary for the Yes campaign.She set me up with an interview with Manuela Tavares, a feminist academic and one of the Presidents of UMAR.Claudia and Manuela gave me oral histories of Portuguese feminism, provided me with books for my research, and gave me names and contact information for other activists.At the end of my time in Europe, I had conducted 27 interviews from members of: three of the five movimentos; UMAR; APF; the Left Bloc; Socialist Youth; pacifist and sexual freedom NGOs; an anonymous feminist collective organized through a blog; Catholic Student Movement; a few GLBT organizations; and the Vice President of the IPPF European Network (International Planned Parenthood Federation). 3All but one of my Portuguese informants were members of a movimento.Most of my informants identified as feminist and more than half were active in feminist organizations.After volunteering with UMAR's Elina Guimarães Documentation Center, I was invited to attend a Young Woman's Conference and a Woman's Conference held by the Portuguese Coordination of the World March of Women with the double role of researcher and UMAR volunteer.I was unable to establish relationships with activists from the No campaign, so all but one of my interviews were conducted with activists from the Yes campaign.Given the public nature of the movement, I was given consent to use the real names of most informants, but I refer to them by their first names whenever possible.At least one pseudonym has been used.Prior to arriving in Lisbon two weeks before the 2007 referendum, I used feminist websites in tandem with online newspapers to prepare myself for the Portuguese abortion reform campaign.I had seen pictures of Portuguese feminist demonstrations in government buildings, a line of women each with one letter written on their shirts, collectively spelling nós abortámos (we have aborted).I had read about sexual rights groups helping to bring Women on Waves to Portugal, reigniting the public debate through controversial international attempts at intervention.But wandering through the narrow cobblestone sidewalks in the beginning of February, it became immediately clear to me that the tactics used by the Yes campaign in Portugal were not what I expected, both as a feminist and reproductive and sexual rights activist from the United States, and as a researcher with cursory knowledge of the history of the Portuguese 3 the dangers of clandestine abortion, and the socioeconomic limitations that would drive a woman to have one.In the 2007 referendum, the abortion reform campaign focused exclusively on clandestine abortion and its enforced penalization.Entering Portugal in the midst of referendum, I found the lack of choice rhetoric disorienting.Engaging with the feminist community, I questioned what I perceived as the abandonment of feminist principles in order to achieve the goal of abortion reform.
The strong valorization of motherhood and heightened Church 5 influence effectively silenced discourses of reproductive control.Censorship limited knowledge of Women'now integrated into the Leftist Bloc) and the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), projected laws to legalize abortion were repeatedly proposed in Parliament.In 1984, the first law making abortion legal passed, but only to protect the health of the woman, in cases of fetal abnormality, and in cases of rape.Though it was the first advance towards legalization, feminists protested the ruling, claiming that clandestine abortions would continue under the restrictive law with phrases like, "'The law of the PS maintains clandestine abortion.The fight continues!'"(Tavares 2004: 31) 8 Despite discontent, the debate about abortion fell out of the public and political realms until the 1990's.In the early 1990's, the Portuguese Family Planning Association launched MODAP (Opinion Movement for the Decriminalization of Abortion in Portugal), integrating several women's groups from leftist political parties, feminist groups, and The Portuguese Association of Women Jurists.In 1994, MODAP proposed a revised law to Parliamentary Commission that would permit abortion on demand in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and increase the time periods for the three cases in which abortion was already legal.In 1996, the PCP presented a projected law to the Parliament for abortion on demand to be legalized for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.The Socialist Youth (JS) presented the same projected law a few months later.Over the next two years, hospitals were investigated about the implementation of the 1984 law.Studies were published revealing that women had died in public hospitals after undergoing clandestine abortions, and confirming that the present law was not adequately addressing the problem.In 1997, UMAR (Union for Alternative and Responding Women) held a Linha SOS/Aborto (SOS Line/ Abortion) for ten days, where women called in to relate their experiences having clandestine abortions.In February MODAP collected fifteen thousand signatures supporting the projected law of PCP and JS; it was voted on and rejected in Parliament.
campaign was led primarily by the approved movement group Sim pela Tolerância, so named to oppose the intolerance exhibited in demonstrations by groups associated with the Church.11According to feminist academic Manuela Tavares, "the tactic of the Movimento Sim pela Tolerância centered on reproductive health and on illegal abortion as dramatic situations women lived through.The discourse of rights was not, in fact, the main tone of this campaign."(2003: 39)  12 .Though not the primary argument, reproductive rights were in fact part of the campaign language.Lawyer and feminist activist Claudia, echoing the sentiments of many Yes campaign activists, believes that "the referendum in 1998 was more like a feminist approach.They used slogans like 'I own my own belly' and things like that and that didn't work in a country such as Portugal at that time"(personal interview, 2007).On the other hand, Tavares notes that some criticized the 1998 movimento for lacking a strong feminist approach, and focusing instead on abortion as an issue of public health.The role of feminist discourse in the Portuguese abortion debate has been contested throughout public reform efforts.Though Tavares credits the loss of the referendum to the strength of the campaign led by the Catholic Church, the indecisiveness of the Socialist Party, and a lack of a strong response by the Yes campaign to the arguments of the No campaign, she agreed to the importance of discourse moderation in the second referendum.In 2007, the Yes campaign launched five movimentos to appeal to different constituents.Three were the most active in Lisbon, and the informants I interviewed were from these groups.Movimento Cidadania e Responsibilidade pelo Sim was open to anyone, while Movimento Jovens Pelo Sim was aimed at younger voters between the ages of 18 and 30, and Medicos Pela Escolha was for medical professionals.To anyone observing the 2007 campaign, it was clear that the Yes had identified two problems that abortion reform would resolve: prosecuting women for having abortions and the public health issue 13 resulting from clandestine abortion(Correia, 2007;Ribeiro & Fonseca, 2007).Speaking exclusively of these two issues was identified in most of my interviews as central to the success of the 2007 Yes campaign.11Though the Catholic Church campaigned hard in the No camp, many members of the Portuguese branch of the group Catholics for Choice joined movimentos for the Yes. 12 Translated from, "A táctica do Movimento Sim pela Tolerância centrou-se na saúde reproductiva e no aborto ilegal como situação dramática vivida pelas mulheres.O discurso dos direitos não foi, de facto, a tónica principal desta campanha." 13Abortion has been framed as a public health issue both within Portugal by the APF and the government, and throughout the EU by the European Parliament(RFSU 2006).
often described as irrelevant to activists who did not identify as feminists, which helped the Yes campaign in deciding to use the strategy of moderation.Victims rather than rights crusaders became icons of the 2007 referendum, their narratives strategically inserted into campaign arguments and advertisements.The woman depicted in the Portuguese campaign leading up to the 1998 referendum had her stomach marked with slogans like 'I own my own belly.'In the 2007 campaign, she was replaced by a young woman behind bars.As politician and JPS activist José explains, moderation was a practical strategy: objections of the No campaign, the Yes campaign was able the arrest and imprisonment of political prisoners by the secret police during Salazar'for violating their respective constitutional allowances for abortion in specific situations(European Court of Human Rights: D. v. Ireland,   Application no.26499/02 [2005]; Tysiac v. Poland, Application no.5410/03[2006]).Portugal has been linked with Ireland, Poland and Malta for its abortion restrictions, and distinguished as the country that tries and imprisons women for having abortions.The European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution in 2002 discussing the practice of abortion in the EU.The thirteenth piece of the resolution "calls upon the governments of the Member States and the candidate countries to refrain in any case from prosecuting women who have undergone illegal abortions"(IPPF EN, 2002: 2).This recommendation, along with similar international directives, was brushed off in my interviews as unimportant to the opinions and voting practices of Portuguese citizens.A few informants noted, however, that such attention probably influenced the Portuguese government officials more.In 2005, the European Parliament held a hearing to discuss exerting EU pressure on Member States with restrictive abortion laws.Anne Van Lancker, the MEP (Member of the European Parliament) from Belgium who authored the 2002 resolution, said during the hearing that, "we should name and shame those countries in the EU that are very restrictive on abortion" (RFSU, 2006: 16).European representatives identified the situation of abortion in Portugal as a cause for national shame, a statement echoed in the campaign materials distributed by the Portuguese Socialist Party.The analysis of shame reversal by feminist historian Temma Kaplan clarifies how the trials went from humiliating women to humiliating the nation.In Kaplan's research on the treatment of political prisoners in the Chilean dictatorship, Ayress, a woman who published a testimony of her experience was able to reverse the shame of her treatment.The Chilean government's intention of silencing dissenters through shame succeeded, as most former prisoners never discussed what they were subjected to in jail.Similarly, the illegality and cultural shame associated with having a clandestine abortion silenced women.Ayress was criticized and threatened for exposing her treatment by the government but, "by detailing the atrocities committed against Ayress, they reversed the shame, turning it back on the Chilean dictatorship where it belonged"(Kaplan 2002).When feminists brought media into the courtrooms, they showed the country and the world that women were being tried and imprisoned in Portugal for having abortions.The local shame of abortion trials ultimately shamed Portugal nationally and internationally through media coverage.
These cases were meant to elicit a visceral response against clandestine abortion, reemphasizing the urgency of reform.The significance of the 2007 doctors' movimento is grounded in the cultural conception of doctors as right-wing and thus associated with the principles of the No campaign.This depiction was accurate, as José explains, because "the mainstream discourse from medical professionals was anti-choice and it was very difficult to get health care professionals to get involved [in the past]" (personal interview, 2007).Doctors began to organize for abortion reform in 2004 after the visit of WOW recharged the public debate.Pedro reasons that it was good for doctors to become involved in reform efforts because it imbued the campaign with scientific information: "this campaign was mainly discussing the importance of medicine and science, what we know about the fetus, what we know about the mother, what we know about the 14 Translated from "Descobriram, também, o misoprostol, princípio activo de comprimidos para a úlcera, com propriedades abortivas, que passaram a ser vendidos no mercado negro-em alguns barrios de Lisboa é possível comprar um comprimido por 25 euros" Abbr.Organization Translation & Definition