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ABSTRACT
The emergence of Islamist movements and religious symbolic repertoires in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution has elicited the political, moral, and practical contestation of women’s right to abortion. While, after several heated debates, the law was eventually not modified, several practitioners working in government family planning clinics have changed their behaviour preventing women getting abortions. Pre-existing state and medical logics, political uncertainties, and new religious and moralising discourses have determined abortion practices in the government health-care facilities generating unequal treatments according to women’s marital status, class, and education. This paper will investigate the multiple logics affecting abortion practices in post-revolutionary Tunisia, focusing on the dissonant logics mobilised by health-care professionals as well as structural socioeconomic factors.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 This expression did not exist in Arabic until very recently and it is usually not used by those who in the Euro-American countries are defined as objectors.
2 I have been working on reproductive and sexual practices in the Arab world since 2006, although I carried out research in the region since 1997. I realised two extensive fieldworks in Jordan and Tunisia where I could easily get access to people and medical facilities thanks to my knowledge of Arabic and familiarity with local societies. As an Italian researcher trained in Italy, France, and Switzerland, who received a secular education and with a middle-class background, I have always tried to do an engaged anthropology. The encounter with individuals who belong to different socioeconomic milieus and have specific ‘moral experiences’ (Kleinman, Citation1999) is central in my conception of the anthropological research.
3 Surgical abortion was still the most used method until the mid-2000s in government clinics and its unavailability was an obstacle for many women. Today a minority of women prefer surgical abortion because it allows to better plan when it will happen and is less time-consuming. Some women are also afraid of medical abortion because of previous traumatic experiences.
4 Each clinic has a director, usually a physician, and a head-midwife in charge of the paramedical staff (midwives, nurses, educators, and receptionists).
5 While, as already mentioned, it is unclear how many abortions take place in the private sector, it is probable that they have increased since the access to the government clinics is more and more difficult. The price for an abortion can vary according to the place, the clinic, and the woman’s situation – whether she is married or not, and the weeks of pregnancy (less or more than three months).
6 In the private sector, women get abortions easily and rapidly. With a few exceptions, private clinics offer only surgical abortions.
7 The stigmatisation of certain categories of women such as unmarried women who seek abortion was already present in the 1980s and 1990s. Despite stigmatization, health professionals tried to help them more than married women in order to protect them from social stigma. See, for example, Labidi (Citation1989) and Hamzaoui (Citation2001).
8 Regional disparity is a crucial issue in the history of health care in Tunisia since independence and is still an unresolved problem. The state attempt to force medical students to work in peripheral areas caused a long strike by medical personnel between December 2013 and February 2014.
9 The names of some private psychiatrists are communicated to the women who have to contact them to obtain the certificate. No direct relationships exist between the hospital and these physicians.
10 This category includes divorced women and widows who can be in their forties and already have children.
11 Law 2010–39. Legal uncertainty exists about the age at which women should be considered as adult citizens such as in the case of abortion and sexual relationships.
12 See, for example, Foster (Citation2001), Sellami (Citation2014), and ONFP (Citation2010b).
13 Two was the ideal number of children to reach the replacement level.
14 While poor married women can sometimes be denied abortion in that they are regarded as responsible for their pregnancy and living in a family set up in which they can take care of one (more) child, homeless, very poor, unmarried, and detained women usually get an abortion because they are seen as unable to ensure the child’s future.
15 From 1956 up to 1987, the president of Tunisia was Habib Bourguiba. He was replaced in 1987 by Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali who ruled up until January 2011.