CATHOLICISM AND EVERYDAY MORALITY: Filipino women’s narratives on reproductive health

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between state policies, religion, reproductive politics, and competing understandings of embodied sexual and reproductive morality. Using ethnographic and life history interviews, this study looks at the lives of Filipino urban poor women and how they interpret, follow and resist Catholic Church doctrines and practices as these relate to sexuality and reproduction. Taking everyday morality as embedded in social practice, this paper argues that women’s subjective reinterpretations of Catholic teachings regarding contraception and abortion render religion pliant in a way that restores moral equilibrium in women’s lives. It is in this process of adjusting and re-adjusting this moral order that women are able to construct their moral worlds. Further, this article investigates how social class, gender and religion work in tension with one another in women’s everyday decisions and how the constraints and opportunities that poor women encounter in their everyday lives are enabled by the state and its institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Catholicism
• everyday morality
• reproductive health
• religion
• contraception
• abortion
• Philippines

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Name of field site has been changed.

2 All names of community women respondents have been changed.