Brenna McCaffrey Chair
Joanna Mishtal Chair
Joanna Mishtal Discussant
Pharmaceutical technologies and reproductive governance of abortion in Ireland
In the context of changing regimes of reproductive governance in Europe, pharmaceutical technologies are increasingly affecting how state actors, activists, and physicians provide reproductive healthcare (Roberts and Morgan 2012). The legalization of abortion in Ireland in 2018, after decades of activism for changes in their restrictive abortion law, has been widely celebrated as a victory for pro-choice, reproductive rights activists. Yet the implementation of abortion in Ireland beginning in 2019 will not merely introduce a medical procedure that had not previously existed. Rather, the legalization process will take a pharmaceutical product (the abortion pill) that has been widely used illegally in Ireland, and make it legal, licit, and medicalized. This shift in control over the abortion pill—from activists’ hands to doctors’ hands; from purchased online to obtained in a clinic, from illegal to legal—is a crucial part of a new logic of reproductive governance, and one that may have unintended effects that will reverberate through Irish medicine, feminist activism, and social and political life. This paper will trace the history of political discussion and advocacy that led to abortion being implemented primarily through the abortion pill in Ireland. It examines evidence and arguments presented to the Citizen’s Assembly in 2016-2017, which ultimately led to recommendations for Ireland’s abortion law; explores the role of lay-activists, physician-advocates, and transnational feminist organizations in legitimizing the abortion pill as the best practice for first-trimester abortions; and presents preliminary data on the health sector implementation of abortion through the abortion pill in Ireland during 2019.
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Informed by a long-term ethnography on pro-life activism in northern Italy (2009-2014) and on media and website analysis targeting Italian anti-abortion groups (2016 -2018) my presentation underscores the mechanisms through which Italian pro-lifers use political pressure, moral injunctions, and ethical incitements to influence reproductive behaviour and population practices.
Since the approval of law194/1978, which regulates the voluntary termination of pregnancy, anti-abortion mobilization in Italy has been strongly influenced and supported by the Catholic Church. In public discourse at least, however, references to religion have long been accorded a secondary role. Arguments drawn from embryology and fetology, appealing to the “natural law” and, more recently, to human rights, are dominating anti-abortion discourses. The “colonisation” of human rights and the shift from a foetus-protective to society-protective stance can be traced back to the growing influence of transnational actors and lobbies (Mancini, Stoeckel 2018; Yamin, Datta, Andion 2018, European Parliamentary Forum on Population & Development 2018).
Keeping my focus on Italy, I will track the circulation of anti-abortion arguments and tactics within and over the European space. The successes of restrictive policies implemented by conservative governments or, on the contrary, the progressive measures adopted in traditionally conservative countries provide, at the local level, an opportunity to pressure the government, to contest pro-choice national and transnational actors and to seek consensus around the urgent need of restoring the “natural order” in life, the family and gender relations. In this context, Europe appears both as an area of possible alliances and of new divisions, which can affect abortion governance within national borders.
University of Milano-Bicocca
The last fifty years have seen an increase in the use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs). Surrogacy, arguably the most controversial among ARTs, has raised relevant ethical questions and public scrutiny. For this reason, only few countries have positively legislated on the practice and, as a result, a growing market of cross- border surrogacy practices emerged. Taking the Italian case as a most extreme instance of restrictive reproductive governance, the present paper aims at investigating whose reproductive projects does the Italian legislation curtail? Why? And, what strategies and narratives do some of these people develop to circumvent legislative restrictions? Based on longitudinal semi-structured interviews with Intended Parents (IPs) during pregnancy and after their babies were born, the present research informs the debate on how concepts of parenthood and reproductive vulnerabilities ((Riggs and Due 2013) are, on the one hand, defined by bio-political regimes and, on the other, contested through growing practices of bio-medical mobilities(Kantsa, V., Zanini, G., and Papadopoulou, L. 2015). The research supports the call for a discussion on surrogacy and how to best legislate it while rejecting the efficiency of a tout-court ban which, besides representing an interference in one’s reproductive project, makes people more vulnerable to feelings of stigmatization and leaves both parents and babies in legal precarious voids.
Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences
Reproductive policies and associated healthcare provision vary dramatically across European countries, creating a stratified landscape for access to abortion care. International travel to access abortion care is a reality for many European women. Yet, few studies offer data about the experiences of women who travel for abortion care, particularly women who travel from countries with relatively liberal abortion laws like France and Italy. These women face unique legal, social, and procedural barriers to legal abortion (e.g., gestational age limits, mandatory counselling, conscientious objection). These barriers, which highlight deep gender and social inequalities in their own countries, may affect their choices, and influence their reproductive experiences. At the same time, these barriers and the travel they catalyse produce new subjectivities and social networks that support and make cross- country abortion travels possible. This paper addresses this phenomenon by presenting the results of a 5-year study on abortion travel across European borders. Drawing mainly on qualitative data collected with women who travelled across borders to seek abortion care in the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain, we comparatively analyse the experiences of women travelling from relatively liberal legal contexts with the experiences of women who travel from nations with very restrictive laws. In particular, we explore the barriers that women encounter while seeking abortion care in their own country, and how they maneuver various socio-political obstacles to secure the care they seek. We examine how women’s perspectives on European abortion laws and policies frame these experiences. We will also consider the forms of reproductive governance that make abortion access difficult, including contentious debates, and disparate agendas of actors and institutions, as well as the factors that make transnational travels possible.
University of Barcelona
University of Central Florida
Joanna Mishtal
University of Central Florida
Silvia De Zordo
University of Barcelona
Ann-Kathrin Ziegler
University of Barcelona
Caitlin Gerdts
IBIS Reproductive Health
Camille Garnsey
IBIS Reproductive Health
Yasmin Reyes
IBIS Reproductive Health
According to a 2010 Spanish law on sexual and reproductive health, abortion is considered a woman’s right and is publicly funded healthcare service in Spain. However, access to abortion varies across the country. Inequalities in access result in women travelling across regions for abortion care, which requires additional time and money, adding further barriers and potentially delaying the procedure. This paper explores the main barriers to abortion care that women face in Spain and women’s experiences navigating these barriers, using preliminary results from an innovative 5-year, mixed-method research study funded by the European Research Council. This paper will discuss reproductive politics and particularly abortion politics in Spain as a form of governance. It will first discuss the public debate on the abortion law, and the complex organization of abortion provision in Spain. It will then examine the main legal, procedural, and social barriers to access across different regions, and explore women’s experiences with said barriers and with abortion-related travel. We will explore abortion travel with a particular emphasis on travel to the capital from other regions. We will show how lack of knowledge about the abortion law and referral among healthcare providers, as well as abuse of conscientious objection, restricts access to timely abortion care. We examine how women’s experiences with stigmatizing relatives, friends, and health professionals increase their need for secrecy, often making their experiences with abortion and travel for abortion care more burdensome. Finally, we will discuss how women overcome the existing restrictions and cope with abortion stigma.
University of Barcelona
University of Barcelona
Caitlin Gerdts
IBIS Reproductive Health
Camille Garnsey
IBIS Reproductive Health
Yasmin Reyes
IBIS Reproductive Health
Contested Sovereignty and Reproductive Governance in Europe
Category
Paper Panel
Description
June 22
11:00 AM - 12:45 PM
1.A.11
Abstract: This panel focuses on the domain of reproductive politics as a form of governance that engages with issues such as population, nation, citizens, race/ethnicity, care, and reproduction. The concept of reproductive governance refers to “the mechanisms through which different historical configurations of actors...use legislative controls, economic inducements, moral injunctions, direct coercion, and ethical incitements to produce, monitor, and control reproductive behaviours and population practices” (Roberts and Morgan 2012:241). Examining changing laws, biomedical practices, activist strategies, and public discourses around reproductive healthcare can help illuminate co-occuring shifts in the logics of sovereignty within the European Union/European nation-states. Feminist arguments for increased bodily autonomy and human rights claims have come into conflict with healthcare systems and legal regimes governing areas of family planning. The role of the Church is also in flux, controlling certain moral arguments and legitimating conscientious objection clauses in medicine, while declining in moral and political influence in other contexts. Crucially, reproductive practices in Europe today often resists national boundaries, and thereby defy the sovereignty of national policies. This is especially evident in abortion care, as people are increasingly either travelling across borders to seek services. This panel will take up the lens of reproductive governance to analyze how reproductive politics are an integral part of contesting and making boundaries and sovereignty in Europe today. This panel consists of 5 papers presenting case studies of Italy, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK, as well as analyses that engage with transnational aspects of reproductive governance in the EU.
Disciplines: Anthropology
Public Health
Substantive Tags: Gender and Sexuality, Health and Healthcare, Technology
Research Networks: Gender and Sexuality