Women, remember that rights are reversible, and we must continue fighting

In October 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, a group of countries including Trump's United States and Bolsonaro's Brazil promoted what is known as the "Geneva Consensus." It is a declaration and a kind of voluntary and non-binding association of countries that defend policies against abortion and in favor, they say, of the family as the main basis of society, in which women have a central role. Joe Biden left, as did Lula da Silva, but in mid-February Trump rejoined, and it is likely that this ultraconservative lobby will gain more and more momentum. It is no joke. It is made up of some 40 countries, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Guatemala, Egypt and Hungary. All of them known for their discriminatory treatment of women and for a religious and patriarchal worldview that seeks to undermine the great consensus that has existed until now in the international context.

It is just proof of how the reactionary wave is advancing and how much attention must be paid to its agenda, because it has very clear objectives and increasingly the means, money and power to impose them. Let us remember, again, that no right is won forever and that, in fact, the UN has just produced a report showing that in one in four countries in the world there has been a setback in 2024. And let us remember that it took Spanish women 40 years to recover the rights that they had supposedly already won during the Republic. That Iranian women could be just as modern as Italian women in the 1960s. And that for more than forty years American women were guaranteed the right to abortion, until the judges appointed by Trump to the Supreme Court overturned the ruling known as "Roe versus Wade" and now it is a right in retrospect.

We are, therefore, in a particularly dangerous moment in which we cannot be distracted. There may be things that have not been done entirely well within the feminist movement, but now we must all go hand in hand defending the rights we have won and being very vigilant so as not to open cracks through which retrograde postulates can sneak in. The right to decide about one's own body, to equality, to choose what kind of family or non-family one wants to have, to name a few, are inalienable. We live in a secular country and we cannot allow religious postulates to be imposed on civil life, whether they come from ultra-Christianity, like that of the USA and Hungary, or from ultra-Islamism. From the Islands, Spain and Europe we need to put a lot of emphasis on this and set the limits in this regard. There is no debate or possible steps back here. Rather, we must continue to move forward, as there is still much to do, and, as far as possible, help and collaborate with the many women everywhere who have lost rights or have never had them.