How disheartening that their president plans to veto it, but I think it's important that their Congress took the step. It's adding to the collective voice around the world that our rights are important.

Do yourselves the honor of not letting the world see that you think South America is just a bunch of Mexicos at which you can toss your cultural imperialism whenever you run out of sensible things to say.

This knee-jerk post -- which isn't even original! -- provides no evidence whatsoever that any of Feministing's writers can even place Uruguay on a map, much less discern the vast differences between that country and Guyana. Anyone with an inkling of what the South American reality is would have written something far more incisive and sensitive.

Cecilieaux, I will give it a shot.

Uruguay is among the most secularized South American countries and its constitution provides for a fairly vigorous separation of church and state, unlike its neighbor Argentina that actually requires that its President be a Roman Catholic (or did last time I checked.) So perhaps it's not too surprising that Uruguay would be the most likely out of the various South American countries to be the next to liberalize its abortion laws.

Guyana and Uruguay don't have much in common; they are thousands of miles apart, mostly don't speak the same languages, are separated by massive Portuguese-speaking Brazil and have few historical roots or economic links in common.

Now to your comments about "cultural imperialism." I saw nothing in Vanessa's post that suggested any cultural imperialism, nor did your comment substantiate the accusation. In my view, it seems a pretty straightforward discussion of political geography. I don't know that Vanessa had it coming. Perhaps I am missing something.

Dear Feministing community,

I am an Uruguayan living in Canada (for three years now). I was delighted to know that my country had taken this big step toward acknowledging women's rights and more in general, social issues. I was pleased for a second time when I saw this posting at Feministing; it was great to see not only that this event was acknowledged by feminists from outside of the country, but that those people were, well, Feministing.
Now, about the legalization of abortion in Uruguay in particular, the debate has been around for decades. I'm thirty years old and I grew up with it. As a feminist, I both hoped and doubted it was ever going to happen. But it did...
A bit of Uruguayan political background: Uruguay returned to democracy in 1984 after 13 years of a military dictatorship. Tabaré Vázquez, elected in 2004, is the first president from a leftist party ever in the history of the country. With that huge political change, a lot of doors were open to work more effectively on discrimination issues feminism is concerned about. Now, as much as Tabaré Vázquez´s government has facilitated this discussion, as it must be acknowledged that we Uruguayans always knew that he, a devoted Roman Catholic, intended to veto any law legalizing abortion. Sad but true, this is happening in a country were the separation of Church and State had never seriously been questioned before.
Cecilieaux, I can't figure out were your concern and disagreement about Vanessa's post comes from. If you decide to elaborate on that, I ask you do that respectfully. I won't get into the details here, in part because Bruce Godfrey already took a very thoughtful stance on your comments. Bruce, I commend you for your well informed post.

Regards,

Anibal