From her vantage point in the director’s office of a publicly-funded pharmaceutical laboratory in Argentina, Elida Formente saw Javier Milei coming and started to prepare.

The self-described anarcho-capitalist had struck a nerve with the Argentine public during the 2023 presidential campaign, unleashing an anti-government proposal that he pitched as the solution to the country’s economic woes. Folded into his angry speeches about slashing public spending and ministry closures was a vow to reverse the legal right to abortion that Formente and other feminists like her had fought hard to secure less than three years earlier.