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This paper analyzes the institutional evolution of the health care system that led to the universalization of coverage and municipalization in the provision of basic health care in Brazil. I argue that a process of state-society transformation in the context of the authoritarian state facilitated the infiltration of the state bureaucracy by reformist groups of society. These activists reoriented the authoritarian health policies toward new goals. In analyzing this case of institutional change, the article advances a gradualist approach to institutional evolution and alerts scholars against the prioritization of critical junctures or locked-in effects in explanations of institutional change or stasis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why hasn?t abortion been liberalized in Latin America? The first part of this article analyzes the experiences of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile in an attempt to answer this question, focusing on the rise of the reproductive rights movement, activism of the Vatican and anti-abortion movements, and the peculiar sociology of abortion in the region. The next part explores how differences in the position of the president on abortion and the availability of congressional allies for the reproductive rights movement affected the political climate surrounding abortion in the three countries in the 1990s and early 2000s. In Brazil, the most liberal country, a ?legal abortion? movement has emerged to encourage public health services to perform abortions on women who have been raped. In Argentina, there is almost no discussion about liberalizing abortion, but conservative attempts to ban abortion under all circumstances have failed. Chile, where abortion is illegal under all circumstances, is completely closed to discussions about liberalizing abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]