"Push and pull": The rocky road to the legalization of abortion in Uruguay

This chapter examines the process of social and political discussion that led to the legalization of abortion in Uruguay, the lights and shadows in the implementation of the new law, and the lessons that can be drawn from this experience. It explores how the decriminalization of abortion first appeared as a demand of the feminist movement to later turn, since the beginning of the new millennium, into a wider citizen demand driven by diverse actors and framed in connection to democracy. The chapter analyzes the “push and pull” process of its adoption, the possibilities and limitations of this instrument, and the main barriers to its implementation. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann points out that there are two ways of defining public opinion: while one is to understand it as “a rationality that contributes to the process of opinion formation and decision-making in a democracy,” the other way is to conceive of it as form of “social control”.