Alicia Ely Yamin

“You guys left the streets,” Mexican feminist Verónica Cruz told me last September. We were speaking eight days after a law took effect in Texas that banned abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy—and just a few days after Mexico’s top court ruled that abortion is no longer a crime in that country. ... It was massive street demonstrations in 2015 in Argentina that launched the “Green Wave” movement for abortion rights that spread across Latin America and around the world. Even there, though, much of the work happened across kitchen tables, in taxis, and in televised legislative hearings, according to Alicia Yamin, a lecturer on law and senior fellow on global health at Harvard Law School. A key turning point came in 2018 when Argentina’s congress came close to passing a bill to decriminalize abortion. The bill failed, but the debate inspired people to talk about abortion in their homes and in the streets. “Feminists were doing this arduous stuff in the shadows, behind the scenes, and slowly, iteratively brought in the broader population to realize what’s at stake,” Yamin said.

An article by Alicia Ely Yamin: Paul Farmer’s far-too-early passing on February 21, 2022 is an incalculable loss to those of us who knew and loved him, to students and patients around the globe, to the world of global health—and to the diverse tapestry of activists, practitioners, and scholars working to advance human rights in health.