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Abstract
This article was named the winner of the 2021 Enloe Award. The committee commented:
This article embodies the spirit of the Enloe Award by helping us conceptualize self-medication abortion as a part of “reproductive governance,” or how multiple actors beyond the state participate in providing and facilitating reproductive health care. This framework is crucial to understanding that access to abortion pills certainly can increase bodily autonomy, illustrating the effectiveness of grassroots feminist activists in meeting the needs of those who wish to terminate pregnancies. At the same time, the manufacturing and distribution of the pills also empower a whole host of actors that promote corporatized care, neoliberal agency, and population management. The article stood out to the committee as an original and exciting feminist intervention in global conversations about abortion access, and we commend the author for the strong theoretical framework, robust methodological approach involving ethnographic research in Mexico, and provocative insights.
ABSTRACT
This article examines two pills that are used to induce abortion in the context of feminist “accompaniment” for self-managed abortion practice in Mexico: misoprostol and mifepristone. For many feminist activists, abortion pills facilitate bodily autonomy in contexts where abortion is legally and socially criminalized. However, my ethnographic research demonstrates that pills are also “territorialized” through assemblages of pharmaceuticalized medicine, where private-sector and civil-society organizations have become protagonists in the provision of abortion health care and the governance of reproductive conduct. Feminist abortion accompaniment works to remedy these limitations by “reterritorializing” pills into new assemblages with practices grounded in principles of solidarity, justice, and bodily autonomy. It is only through these practices that abortion pills become truly revolutionary.
RESUMEN
Este artículo analiza dos medicamentos que se utilizan para inducir el aborto en el contexto del acompañamiento feminista en México: misoprostol y mifepristona. Para muchas acompañantes feministas, los medicamentos facilitan la autonomía en contextos donde el aborto es social y legalmente criminalizado. Sin embargo, mi investigación etnográfica demuestra que los medicamentos también se territorializan a través de ensamblajes de farmaceuticalización del aborto (assemblages of pharmaceuticalization), donde actores del sector privado y la sociedad civil se vuelven protagonistas tanto en la provisión de servicios de salud sexual y reproductiva como la gobernanza reproductiva. El acompañamiento feminista remedia estas limitaciones reterritorializando los medicamentos en nuevos ensamblajes con prácticas basadas en la sororidad, justicia y autonomía. Es sólo a través de estas prácticas que los medicamentos se vuelven verdaderamente revolucionarias.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 There is some debate about the appropriate term for an abortion using medication (Weitz et al. Citation2004). In Spanish, it is usually referred to as “aborto con medicamentos.” I use the term “medication abortion” as the closest translation. Though “medication abortion” can also refer to situations in which abortion pills are prescribed by doctors, this article refers specifically to the practice of self-inducing an abortion using medication under the guidance of trained feminist activists.
2 I acknowledge that people who do not identify as women also have abortions and that there is an important push in global feminist abortion spaces to use inclusive language. However, I have chosen the term “women” as it is the language used by my interlocutors.
3 Since 2019, abortion has been decriminalized in the states of Oaxaca, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Baja California, Colima, Sinaloa, Guerrero, Baja California Sur, and Quintana Roo (in chronological order). Access to public health services continues to be extremely limited in these states.
4 Collier and Ong (Citation2003) also emphasize the open-ended, fluid, unstable, and partial nature of such arrangements, in contrast to Deleuze and Guattari’s focus on the totalizing inevitability of capitalist expansion.
5 The states in which my interview participants reside and work are Baja California, Campeche, Chiapas, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Mexico City, Mexico State, Michoacán, Morelos, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tabasco, and Yucatán.
6 I acknowledge this is a small sample, compared to the approximately 6,900 pharmacies registered in the city (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) Citation2020).
7 WhatsApp is a free messaging service app.
8 This is a play on the common expletive “son of your mother,” transformed here as “daughter of your misoprostol father.”
9 Those who accompanied abortions after 24 weeks referred to the dosages recommended by the Socorristas en Red accompaniment network that has published research on later-term abortions using medication (Zurbriggen, Keefe-Oates, and Gerdts Citation2018).
10 The literal translation is “they don’t take a step without a sandal.”
11 These are Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, Chile, and Bolivia.
12 The director organized what he described as “missions” to Mexico City with Emielle-Etienne Baulieu, who led efforts to develop the original RU-486 molecule. They spoke with government officials, law makers, and health authorities about the benefits of mifepristone (see also Baulieu and Rosenblum Citation1991).
13 At the time of writing, this registration had still not been approved.
14 Reforms implemented in 2011 placed stricter controls on prescription requirements for Category Four and higher medications. However, it seems that in practice they are usually only applied to antibiotics (Lara et al. Citation2011).
15 The geographical scope of my visits was limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
16 While it is becoming more common for acompañantes to assist women with later-term abortions using pills, many do not, preferring to send women to Mexico City where some clinics provide later-term abortions.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Madeleine Belfrage
Madeleine Belfrage is a PhD candidate in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland, Australia. She has worked for non-governmental organizations on sexual and reproductive rights and feminist grassroots funding in Mexico since 2015. Her research interests include abortion stigma, self-managed abortion, Latin American feminisms, reproductive governance, and neoliberalism.