Paper Title
Navigating Choice and Obligation: Experiences of Induced Abortion in Highland Bolivia, 1955-2007
Start Date
12-6-2011 9:30 AM
End Date
12-6-2011 12:00 PM
Subject Areas
Latin American/Caribbean, activism, motherhood, reproduction
Abstract
Bolivia holds one of the highest rates of unwanted pregnancy and illegal abortion in Latin America, yet little is known about women’s experiences with these phenomena. Bolivia’s 1952 revolution marked a new era of debate about women’s status in the modernizing nation. While the 1950s and 1960s saw more women entering the workforce—adding urgency to some women’s desire to limit pregnancies—the subsequent period of military rule witnessed a backlash against modern contraceptive methods. This backlash was fueled by fears that international organizations were encouraging birth control use to limit Bolivia’s indigenous populations. The country’s resulting pro-natalism cast disapproval on women who sought to prevent pregnancy and shrouded in secrecy women’s strategies for confronting unwanted pregnancy.
Based on medical records and personal interviews, this paper uncovers women’s experiences with abortion during a period of changing attitudes about women’s status and of new concerns about contraception and reproduction. Centering on the highland cities of La Paz and El Alto, I examine women’s experiences with abortion between 1955 and 2007. The paper highlights the personal testimonies of a limited number of women who terminated pregnancies across these years, revealing the wide range of women’s reasons for seeking—and conceptualizations of—abortion. In particular, I argue that the politicized concepts of “decision-making” and “choice” are inadequate to understand women’s reproductive experiences in Bolivia. In addition, the paper draws on interviews with medical personnel and reproductive rights activists to reveal the changing landscape of birth control and abortion provisioning across these decades.
Keywords
Bolivia, abortion, women, reproduction
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Download
Navigating Choice and Obligation: Experiences of Induced Abortion in Highland Bolivia, 1955-2007
Bolivia holds one of the highest rates of unwanted pregnancy and illegal abortion in Latin America, yet little is known about women’s experiences with these phenomena. Bolivia’s 1952 revolution marked a new era of debate about women’s status in the modernizing nation. While the 1950s and 1960s saw more women entering the workforce—adding urgency to some women’s desire to limit pregnancies—the subsequent period of military rule witnessed a backlash against modern contraceptive methods. This backlash was fueled by fears that international organizations were encouraging birth control use to limit Bolivia’s indigenous populations. The country’s resulting pro-natalism cast disapproval on women who sought to prevent pregnancy and shrouded in secrecy women’s strategies for confronting unwanted pregnancy.
Based on medical records and personal interviews, this paper uncovers women’s experiences with abortion during a period of changing attitudes about women’s status and of new concerns about contraception and reproduction. Centering on the highland cities of La Paz and El Alto, I examine women’s experiences with abortion between 1955 and 2007. The paper highlights the personal testimonies of a limited number of women who terminated pregnancies across these years, revealing the wide range of women’s reasons for seeking—and conceptualizations of—abortion. In particular, I argue that the politicized concepts of “decision-making” and “choice” are inadequate to understand women’s reproductive experiences in Bolivia. In addition, the paper draws on interviews with medical personnel and reproductive rights activists to reveal the changing landscape of birth control and abortion provisioning across these decades.