Reproductive governance in Latin America

Abstract

This paper develops the concept of reproductive governance as an analytic tool for tracing the shifting political rationalities of population and reproduction. As advanced here, the concept of reproductive governance refers to the mechanisms through which different historical configurations of actors – such as state, religious, and international financial institutions, NGOs, and social movements – use legislative controls, economic inducements, moral injunctions, direct coercion, and ethical incitements to produce, monitor, and control reproductive behaviours and population practices. Examples are drawn from Latin America, where reproductive governance is undergoing a dramatic transformation as public policy conversations are coalescing around new moral regimes and rights-based actors through debates about abortion, emergency contraception, sterilisation, migration, and assisted reproductive technologies. Reproductive discourses are increasingly framed through morality and contestations over ‘rights’, where rights-bearing citizens are pitted against each other in claiming reproductive, sexual, indigenous, and natural rights, as well as the ‘right to life’ of the unborn. The concept of reproductive governance can be applied to other settings in order to understand shifting political rationalities within the domain of reproduction.

Keywords:

• reproduction
• governance
• human rights
• neoliberalism
• Latin America

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Silvia De Zordo and Milena Marchesi for the invitation to participate in this special issue as well as their guidance in revising the piece. Roberts would like to thank Diane Nelson, Michelle Murphy and S. Lochlann Jain of Oxidate, as well as Rebecca Hardin, Mark Padilla and Matt Hull for their generous comments and suggestions on this text and their help conceptualising reproductive governance. The NSF and the Wenner Gren Foundation funded Elizabeth Robert's ethnographic research, which informed her analysis. Lynn Morgan is grateful to the School for Advanced Research and Mount Holyoke College for supporting this research, and to Charles Briggs, Clara Mantini-Briggs, Chris Teuton, Sherry Farrell Racette, and James Trostle for their comments and camaraderie. Institutional ethics review was not required for this research.

Conflict of interest: none.

Notes

1. In an internationally publicised case that occurred a week after the new legislation was signed into effect in Nicaragua, an 18-year old woman died of septic shock after an illegal abortion because doctors were afraid to give her antibiotics lest they be accused as accomplices.