Fears for women's rights as Chile's new president takes power

Women’s rights activists in Chile are bracing themselves for the most conservative president to take office since the Pinochet dictatorship.

- Charis McGowan John Bartlett

José Antonio Kast, a 60-year-old ultra Catholic whose German father was in the Nazi party, has often blocked progressive attempts to deliver women’s rights and equality over his three decades in politics.

Kast, who is being inaugurated today, voted against divorce when Chile became one of the last countries in the world to legalise it in 2004 and vehemently opposed the legalisation of abortion under limited exceptions when this was passed in 2017.

He has since pushed to revert to a total ban on abortion, with parental consent being required for the morning-after pill.

Chile allowed abortion for medical reasons from the 1930s until Augusto Pinochet issued a total ban in 1989 as one of his final decrees.

An unapologetic supporter of the general, Kast upholds much of his regime’s traditional views on society and patriarchal family order.

This stands in contrast to feminist and gay rights movements across Latin America since the 2010s, including the “green wave” that successfully pushed for free abortion rights in Argentina, Colombia and some Mexican states.