It was announced last week that on March 1st the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernandez, will introduce a bill to Congress to allow abortions up to 14 weeks gestation. It would make Argentina the third country in South America to legalize abortion, after its neighbor Uruguay and Guyana.

The current campaign to legalize abortion began five years ago, after the rate of femicide in Argentina reached an all-time high. Anger over high-profile rapes and murders resulted in activists founding the nonprofit Ni Una Menos, whose widely attended marches and viral social media campaigns pushed women’s rights onto the political agenda.

In August 2018, Argentina narrowly missed legalizing abortion after a bill passed in Congress but not the Senate. At the time, it was still celebrated as a victory for making a previously taboo and hushed procedure socially acceptable.

Under current law, abortion is only allowed in cases of rape or when the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother. According to a statistical extrapolation conducted by the Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), 370,000 to 520,000 legal and illegal abortions were performed in Argentina in 2005, the last year such a study was conducted.

The grassroots success of the Ni Una Menos campaign marks a significant cultural shift for the largely Catholic and conservative country. The key change has come from accepting abortion as a part of the liberal agenda, when previously it was considered a crime, regardless of party. The leftist Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (CFK), who was against legal abortion during her presidency and even blocked its debate in Congress, is now a rabid supporter of legalization. She was re-elected as vice resident in December, partially on a platform promising to introduce an abortion bill as quickly as possible.

Such sudden political pivoting is common in Argentina, where survival often requires deft maneuvering; after the economy crashed in 2001, the country went through five presidents in one month. Tellingly, CFK’s ideology—known as Kirchnerism—built its brand based on supporting human rights. Her predecessor and husband Nestor Kirchner was the first president who openly acknowledged the victims of the crimes of Argentina’s dictatorship, inviting them to his inauguration.

The Kirchners’ support for human rights has long been perceived as simultaneously both genuine and opportunistic, a symbiotic relationship of questionable moral fortitude. It therefore came as little surprise that once the abortion discourse entered the mainstream as a human rights issue CFK adopted it as part of her platform.

Given that this time the bill is being introduced by the president himself, supporters are hopeful that it will have a successful outcome. According to a survey conducted by the newspaper Clarin, the lower house of Congress currently has the simple majority it needs to pass the law. The Senate is still in question with 30 deputies in favor, 33 against, six in doubt, and one abstention. Should it not pass, the bill’s impact remains indisputably significant. According to Ni Una Menos activist Carla Pacciarini, “There is still a lot to do, but it has been the catalyst to make feminism a part of the daily discussions of Argentines, and there are certain things that we can no longer choose not to speak of. They have been exposed by the movement.”