When the Rosa Parks Prize was awarded to a conservative Argentine senator in 2009 for her outspoken opposition to contraception, sterilisation, and abortion, it was clear that something odd was happening. This paper documents the appropriation of "human rights" discourses by conservative Catholics in Latin America, where the recent success of reproductive and sexual rights social movements has generated a significant backlash. It specifically traces an effort by Catholic legal scholars to justify what they term "a distinctively Latin American approach to human rights" while ignoring decades of human rights activism by others. Opponents of reproductive and sexual rights are deploying rights-talk selectively and strategically, I argue, using it as secular cover to advance pro-life and pro-family policies.
human rights; sexual and reproductive rights; abortion; Catholic conservatives; anti-abortion groups