The Unfortunate Sufferer: Discursive Dynamics around Pregnancy Loss in Cameroon

Abstract

Pregnancy losses are ambiguous affairs in East Cameroon. Childbearing is not always people’s primary aim within their fragile sexual and marital relationships, and it is often unclear to outsiders whether a pregnancy interruption is intended or unintended. Drawing on 15 months of fieldwork, I explore the discursive strategies Gbigbil women deploy while navigating such ambiguities around interrupted pregnancies. Suffering is central to their defensive discourses. Depending on the stakes in their relationships, women foreground the notion of suffering either to portray themselves as moral and innocent—and maintain social status or raise support—or to allude to or acknowledge their intention to terminate a pregnancy. This dynamic deployment of a suffering discourse reveals the interconnections of unintended and intended pregnancy losses, and of suffering (associated especially with the former) and agency (often associated with the latter).

Keywords:

• Cameroon
• discourse
• pregnancy loss
• suffering

Notes

1. Like the names of all informants mentioned in this article, the name of Celestine is a pseudonym.

2. This point of view represents just one side in a more encompassing debate on abortion and has been refined and contested. Nevertheless, the representation of abortion as a device for women to control their own bodies is widespread, in both academic and lay circles.

3. With this survey, I intended to get a sense of the sexual behavior, marital histories, and reproductive trajectories of all sexually experienced women aged 12 years or older in the village. Contrary to conventional surveys, this anthropo-demographic questionnaire had an open format that allowed for elaborate answers. In total, 223 ‘wasted pregnancies’ were reported by 60% of all informants, and 11% of these interruptions were acknowledged to be consciously induced.

4. The total fertility rate in the province amounts to 5.4 children per woman (ICF International 2011). For an excellent discussion of pronatalist attitudes in the region, see Wakam (2004).

5. Section 337 of the Cameroonian Penal Code only allows for abortion when a pregnancy results from rape, or when at least three professionals agree that a pregnancy endangers a woman’s life. However, since rape is often kept secret and the procedures to obtain the agreement of three independent professionals are long and complicated (GTZ 2009; Henshaw, Singh, and Haas 1999; Rahman, Katzive, and Henshaw 1998), in practice almost all induced abortions are illegally conducted—and thus, formally, punishable by law.

6. Although villagers often mentioned that abortions are more common now than in the past, the female agency, rebellion, and fertility rites described in several historical sources (Barbier 1985; Laburthe-Tolra 1981; Vincent 1976) suggest that historically, too, it was not uncommon for women in this region to take their fertility into their own hands.

7. Most methods are postcoital and based on indigenous products. Biomedical contraceptives are much less used, due to the secondary effects and infertility they are thought to provoke. National statistics indicate that 12.5% of all women of procreative age in the East province resort to contraceptive means (ICF International 2011). In my survey, only 10% of all 290 respondents stated to have ever used a product to prevent a pregnancy from entering—suggesting that fertility regulation happens mostly after, and not before, sexual intercourse.

8. This general scenario excludes the few cases in which men are aware of, and agreeing with, an induced abortion.

9. This neglect of the lost embryo or fetus is also reflected in its burial, which, unlike burials of small children and adults, is hasty and unattended by relatives or other villagers. For the ways in which Gbigbil women draw attention to what they have actually lost, see van der Sijpt (2013).

10. Over the past three decades, Cameroon has witnessed the creation of a Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Family, certain laws concerning women’s rights (with regard to physical integrity, marriage, divorce, and inheritance), educational programs, women’s associations and nongovernmental organizations, and the yearly International Women’s Day on March 8.

11. When speaking about suffering, both with me and others, people often employed the French word souffrance and not the Gbigbil word diuk.

12. For comparison purposes: at the time of this research, one loaf of bread cost 100 CFA Francs.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erica van der Sijpt

Erica van der Sijpt is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam. Her PhD thesis was on the experiences and decision-making processes around pregnancy interruptions in East Cameroon. She is currently studying the reproductive perceptions, practices, and politics of three generations of women in Central Romania.