[The experience in Uruguay: the Bill for the Defense of Reproductive Health]

This article reports on the recent Uruguayan experience with the debate on sexual and reproductive rights. While the Bill for the Defense of Reproductive Health did not pass in the Senate, both the prior process and the subsequent impacts have been relevant, generating a social debate that is still incipient but has involved the mass media, academia, and the political parties and spawning a discussion that has involved both houses of Congress for the first time. Within this context, an outstanding role has been played by NGOs devoted to the defense of women's rights (especially sexual and reproductive), who established a coordinating body that included the trade union movement, which supported the bill. The debate also led to international ties that projected it beyond the country's borders. The article briefly reviews the background and basis for the bill, the research it entailed, and the international commitments assumed by Uruguay, before concluding with a summary of the bill itself and the challenges it poses in terms of sexual and reproductive rights, specifically with regard to voluntary interruption of pregnancy.