Paul Tuns:
On Dec. 14, pro-life conservative José Antonio Kast won 58 per cent of the vote in the Chilean presidential election against Jeannette Jara of the Chilean Communist Party, which has ties to Cuba and Nicaragua. Kast will be sworn into office on March 11.
Kast is a married Catholic and father of nine children, who had served as a city councilor in Buin before running for the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house in the Chilean legislature. He was endorsed by his local bishop, Juan Ignacio Gonzalez Errazuriz of San Bernardo, because of Kast’s opposition to emergency contraception and same-sex “marriage.”
He left the center-right Independent Democratic Union in 2016, saying it had drifted too far toward the center and away from its conservative convictions. In 2019, he formed the Republican Party, which supports free market economics and social conservatism.
He had run for president twice before, losing both times. In 2017, he ran as an independent on the platform “less taxes, less government, pro-life.” He finished fourth with just under eight per cent of the vote. In 2021, he ran as the Republican candidate on a pro-life platform and garnered 28 per cent of the vote, good for first and a place in the runoff election. He finished with 44 per cent of the vote against the socialist Gabriel Boric.
In 2022, Kast campaigned against Boric’s proposed new constitution which would have guaranteed the right to abortion. The constitution was defeated in a national referendum. The following year, Kast’s Republican Party won the largest number of seats in the special Constitutional Council, 23 of 51, tasked with writing a new constitution. The final proposed constitutional guaranteed the protection of all preborn life, but it, too, was defeated in a national referendum.
Kast would contest the 2025 presidential election and formed a coalition of right-wing parties under the banner Change for Chile. In the first round of voting on Nov. 29, 2025, Kast finished second with 24 per cent, just behind the Communist Jara (27 per cent). Two weeks later, he won all 16 regions of Chile and his 58 per cent vote share was the second highest since General Augusto Pinochet stepped down as leader of the country in 1990.
Kast is opposed to abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex “marriage” and appointed Judith Marin, 30, an evangelical pro-life, pro-family woman as his Minister of Women and Gender Equality. He said that he was not forming a cabinet “for administration” but “for combat.”
In a 2024 documentary, Kast said, he has “always been very clear about things, never deceiving people, never falsifying my position,” and with the purpose of “winning people’s hearts, whatever the result may be.” He spoke proudly of being one of ten children after his mother refused to be sterilized during an early difficult pregnancy and of his own nine children.
In that documentary, he also said that the push to permit abortion for all nine months in Chile was based on a misunderstanding: “She is not the owner of the body of another being that is inside her.”
Raimundo Rojas, outreach and events director of the National Right to Life Committee, said Kast’s “victory didn’t just reflect frustration with crime and illegal immigration” and “It signaled a clear rejection of radical social engineering.” Rojas said, “Voters chose security, tradition, and national identity over the chaos of a failed left-wing experiment.”
Rojas, who is active at the United Nations, said Kast’s administration “will bring new life to the UN delegation and reinforce the message that Latin America still believes in protecting the unborn at the Organization of American States.”
Rojas noted that Chile will join other pro-life allies in Latin America. In 2023, pro-life libertarian Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina and his party won an unexpected majority in the October 2025 midterms. Milei has spoken out publicly against abortion, has appointed pro-lifers to positions in the health ministry, and is working to rescind the country’s 2020 pro-abortion law. In Bolivia last August, the socialist Movement for Socialism that was in power for nearly two decades was defeated. MAS leaders Evo Morales and Luis Arce attempted to rescind the country’s pro-life law and regulations but public backlash forced them to retreat. Now that a center-right coalition has come to power on a platform of maintaining the country’s constitutional protection for preborn life, Rojas sees the law is safe for now. Meanwhile, in Ecuador, President Daniel Noboa was re-elected and the country “remains a reliable pro-life ally in global forums.”
Rojas said, “When pro-life governments take power, they send pro-life ambassadors. That changes everything” as they “challenge language, block radical proposals, and speak up when it counts.” He said, “Latin America’s conservative resurgence is restoring balance.”
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