The Politics of Abortion Care in Buenos Aires: Understanding Abortion Care Practices within a Context of a Political Debate to Legalize Abortion
Context: In Argentina, abortion is illegal except for when the health or life of the pregnant person is in danger or when the pregnancy is a result of sexual violation. In the last 15 years, the Argentine feminist movement has grown significantly and one of their main action points is to fight for legal abortion. This activism has caused that a bill to legalize abortions was discussed for the first time in National Congress in 2018, yet remains actual, as the bill got rejected. Legal abortions – in case of the exceptions – are becoming more accessible, although the Argentine context remains in a lot of aspects unfavourable for the practice of abortion, because abortion remains taboo and socially criminalized due to deeply rooted heteropatriarchal structures with obligatory motherhood as a consequence. Objective: This thesis looks at how abortion caregivers enact agency to shape their practices and enhance access to and the provision of abortion care within the current structural context. Methods: During fieldwork of two months in Buenos Aires, 12 semi-structured interviews – face-to-face and online – were conducted in Spanish, with both health professionals and non-health professional abortion caregivers. Moreover, guidelines on abortion care, documents about abortion care training and the political abortion debate in Argentina, and relevant online sources were studied. Lastly, observations were done at feminist events. Possibilities to observe and conduct face-to-face interviews were limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion: Based on the interviews and other collected data, I show that abortion caregivers are facing obstacles and argue that these are a result of heteropatriarchal structures. Drawing on decolonial feminism, I show that these structures are caused by coloniality. Nonetheless, I argue that the way the abortion caregivers enact agency to shape their practices, improve the context in which they are working and diffuse their knowledge, shows how they resist the heteropatriarchal structure, so that they are able to provide comprehensive abortion care, despite limitations in the law.
The Politics of Abortion Care in Buenos Aires: Understanding Abortion Care Practices within a Context of a Political Debate to Legalize Abortion
Context: In Argentina, abortion is illegal except for when the health or life of the pregnant person is in danger or when the pregnancy is a result of sexual violation. In the last 15 years, the Argentine feminist movement has grown significantly and one of their main action points is to fight for legal abortion. This activism has caused that a bill to legalize abortions was discussed for the first time in National Congress in 2018, yet remains actual, as the bill got rejected. Legal abortions – in case of the exceptions – are becoming more accessible, although the Argentine context remains in a lot of aspects unfavourable for the practice of abortion, because abortion remains taboo and socially criminalized due to deeply rooted heteropatriarchal structures with obligatory motherhood as a consequence. Objective: This thesis looks at how abortion caregivers enact agency to shape their practices and enhance access to and the provision of abortion care within the current structural context. Methods: During fieldwork of two months in Buenos Aires, 12 semi-structured interviews – face-to-face and online – were conducted in Spanish, with both health professionals and non-health professional abortion caregivers. Moreover, guidelines on abortion care, documents about abortion care training and the political abortion debate in Argentina, and relevant online sources were studied. Lastly, observations were done at feminist events. Possibilities to observe and conduct face-to-face interviews were limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion: Based on the interviews and other collected data, I show that abortion caregivers are facing obstacles and argue that these are a result of heteropatriarchal structures. Drawing on decolonial feminism, I show that these structures are caused by coloniality. Nonetheless, I argue that the way the abortion caregivers enact agency to shape their practices, improve the context in which they are working and diffuse their knowledge, shows how they resist the heteropatriarchal structure, so that they are able to provide comprehensive abortion care, despite limitations in the law.
