South America’s Populist Pro-life Movement
By Jonathon Van Maren, European Conservative.
In 2022, 62% of voters in Chile rejected a pro-abortion constitution backed by the country’s young leftist leader, 36-year-old President Gabriel Boric. The new 388-article constitution, drafted by a constituent assembly, would have locked many progressive agenda items into law, including the legalization of abortion as a fundamental human right. In November of the following year, pro-lifers triumphed again in Peru with the passage of Law No. 785, which affirmed that life begins at conception and recognizes the right to life of unborn children.
The American pro-life movement is internationally renowned due to its outsize influence on U.S. politics and the consequent overturn of Roe v. Wade; European pro-life movements are less well-known, but still receive occasional press coverage. The growing “Light Blue Wave” movement in South American and Latin America, however, is largely unknown in the West despite its size and growing political influence. It is perhaps the only continental populist movement the mainstream media is disinterested in covering.
The Blue Wave movement began in 2018, when pro-life and pro-family forces converged in response to attempts to legalize abortion in Argentina by abortion activists who referred to themselves as the “Green Wave.” From Chile to the Dominican Republic, huge crowds poured into the streets sporting blue bandanas, waving banners, hoisting balloons, and setting off blue smoke bombs. The aesthetic was as potent as their mobilizing power. In the months leading up to the 2018 senate vote on abortion in Argentina, pro-lifers mobilized millions, and wearing blue became, one activist told me, a “sign of resistance.”
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