Abstract While legal mobilization through litigation and legislative reform has been widely examined, less is known about how political and social actors engage constitution-making processes to advance or restrict rights. Latin America provides a particularly relevant context to study this phenomenon, given the region’s frequent constitutional replacements and the growing tendency of activists to use constitution-making itself when other institutional channels prove unresponsive. This article analyzes Chile’s 2021–2022 Constitutional Convention – the first phase of the 2020–2023 constitutional replacement process. Focusing on the constitutional mobilization of anti-abortion rights groups, we examine how, despite an unfavorable political opportunity structure and public opinion, they sought to roll back reproductive rights advances. Drawing on interviews, official records, protest event data, and public opinion surveys, we identify three main strategies employed by anti-abortion rights groups: reframing opposition to abortion within constitutional, natural law, and international human rights discourses; bundling conservative causes with broader appeals to protect life and property; and leveraging the referendum campaign to cast the draft constitution as a threat to national identity. Our findings demonstrate how constitutional replacement processes create distinct arenas for anti-rights mobilization, thereby contributing to the discussion on the “right against rights” in constitution-making contexts.
Rodríguez et al. (Tue,) studied this question.