Latin America historically has had some of the strictest abortion laws in the world, making unsafe procedures a main cause of mortality among women and girls. However, in the context of the Green Wave, three countries recently have amply decriminalized access to abortion: Mexico (2021, 2023), Colombia (2022), and Argentina (2020) (Uruguay did so in 2012). The recent wave of decriminalization is the culmination of larger, historical processes that involved the gradual judicialization of reproductive rights in the region. Courts have been a central part of the story. In these three cases, arguments advanced by state and nonstate actors in favor of decriminalization significantly built on jurisprudence developed over many years. The process of abortion decriminalization has been partly a tale of gradual judicialization.

Despite the fact that the election of Vicente Fox to the presidency of Mexico in 2000 saw the arrival of the most socially conservative administration in contemporary Mexican politics, his government launched the country's first nationwide antihomophobia campaign in early 2005. This article attempts to solve this seeming policy puzzle by presenting empirical research evidence that suggests that the formulation and implementation of this policy was largely a result of the ability of several advocates of sexual minority rights to pursue this policy initiative from within government. Because Fox's election also saw a significant opening of the policy process, several “policy entrepreneurs” gained access to the policy-making process. However, given the controversial nature of the policy they pursued, policy entrepreneurs relied on the deployment of two policy frames to implement their policy in the face of fierce opposition: a scientific frame and a legal frame. The research presented here reveals that the successful launch of the campaign was the result of the strategic use of these two frames by an alliance of policy entrepreneurs working from within the state across federal bureaucratic agencies. Given the advantage the two frames afforded their case when confronting arguments based on morality, they ultimately managed to overcome fierce opposition from state and nonstate actors to implement their policy.

This study explores the relationship between railroad integration and regional development on the European periphery between 1870 and 1910, based on a regional data set including 291 spatial units. Railroad integration is proxied by railroad density, while per capita GDP is used as an indicator of economic development. The period under study is of particular relevance as it has been associated with the second wave of railroad construction in Europe and also coincides with the industrialization of most of the continent. Overall, we found that railroads had a significant and positive impact on the growth of per capita GDP across Europe. The magnitude of this relationship appears to be relatively modest, but the results obtained are robust with respect to a number of different specifications. From a geographical perspective, we found that railroads had a significantly greater influence on regions located in countries on the northern periphery of Europe than in other outlying areas. They also helped the economies of these areas to begin the process of catching up with the continent’s industrialized core. In contrast, the regions on the southern periphery showed lower levels of economic growth, with this exacerbating the preexisting divergence in economic development. The expansion of the railroad network in them was unable to homogenize the diffusion of economic development and tended to further benefit the regions that were already industrialized. In most of the cases, the capital effect was magnified, and this contributed to the consolidation of newly created nation-states.

Research in advanced industrialized democracies on social attitudes toward same-sex marriage suggests that intergroup social contact and positive media coverage play an important role in promoting tolerance and support for same-sex marriage. Using AmericasBarometer survey data for eighteen countries in 2010, 2012, and 2014, this article examines the ways in which individual-level Internet use interacts with news exposure, country-level quality of democracy, Internet penetration, and their association with support for same-sex marriage. The results suggest that not only is Internet use associated with greater support for same-sex marriage, but that among those who both use the Internet and pay more attention to the news, the positive effects are amplified. In addition, national level of democracy, economic development, and Internet use are also associated with overall higher probabilities of supporting same-sex marriage. We find that Internet use has a strong positive association with the probability of supporting same-sex marriage as the percentage of the national population on the Internet increases. These findings extend our understanding of social and political tolerance of same-sex marriage in Latin America.

Latin America has been at the forefront of the expansion of rights for same-sex couples. Proponents of same-sex marriage frame the issue as related to human rights and democratic deepening; opponents emphasize morality tied to religious values. Elite framing shapes public opinion when frames resonate with individuals’ values and the frame source is deemed credible. Using surveys in 18 Latin American countries in 2010 and 2012, this article demonstrates that democratic values are associated with support for same-sex marriage while religiosity reduces support, particularly among strong democrats. The tension between democratic and religious values is particularly salient for women, people who live outside the capital city, and people who came of age during or before democratization.

Prospective studies assessing the association between fibre intake or fibre-rich food consumption and the risk of CVD have often been limited by baseline assessment of diet. Thus far, no study has used yearly repeated measurements of dietary changes during follow-up. Moreover, previous studies included healthy and selected participants who did not represent subjects at high cardiovascular risk. We used yearly repeated measurements of diet to investigate the association between fibre intake and CVD in a Mediterranean cohort of elderly adults at high cardiovascular risk. We followed-up 7216 men (55–80 years) and women (60–80 years) initially free of CVD for up to 7 years in the PREvención con DIeta MEDiterránea study (registered as ISRCTN35739639). A 137-item validated FFQ was repeated yearly to assess diet. The primary end point, confirmed by a blinded ad hoc Event Adjudication Committee, was a composite of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction and stroke. Time-dependent Cox’s regression models were used to estimate the risk of CVD according to baseline dietary exposures and to their yearly updated changes. We found a significant inverse association for fibre (P for trend=0·020) and fruits (P for trend=0·024) in age-sex adjusted models, but the statistical significance was lost in fully adjusted models. However, we found a significant inverse association with CVD incidence for the sum of fruit and vegetable consumption. Participants who consumed in total nine or more servings/d of fruits plus vegetables had a hazard ratio 0·60 (95 % CI 0·40, 0·96) of CVD in comparison with those consuming <5 servings/d.