In Argentina, Chile and Ecuador, abortion at later durations of pregnancy is legally restricted. Feminist collectives in these contexts support people through self-managed medical abortion outside the healthcare system. The model of in-person abortion accompaniment represents an opportunity to examine a self-care practice that challenges and reimagines abortion provision. We formed a collaborative partnership built on a commitment to shared power and decision-making between researchers and partners. We conducted 28 key informant interviews with accompaniers in Argentina, Chile and Ecuador in 2019 about their model of in-person abortion accompaniment at later durations of pregnancy. We iteratively coded transcripts using a thematic analysis approach. Accompaniers premised their work in a feminist activist framework that understands accompaniment as addressing inequalities and expanding rights, especially for the historically marginalised. Through a detailed description of the process of in-person accompaniment, we show that the model, including the logistical considerations and security mechanisms put in place to ensure favourable abortion outcomes, emphasises peer-to-peer provision of supportive physical and emotional care of the accompanied person. In this way, it represents supported self-care through which individuals are centred as the protagonists of their own abortion, while being accompanied by feminist peers. This model of supported self-care challenges the idea that “self-care” necessarily means “solo care”, or care that happens alone. The model’s focus on peer-to-peer transfer of knowledge, providing emotional support, and centring the accompanied person not only expands access to abortion, but represents person-centred practices that could be scaled and replicated across contexts.
BackgroundThis paper analyzes the strategies used by activist health professionals in Argentina who justify providing abortion despite legal restrictions on the procedure. These “insider activists” make a case for abortion rights by linking pregnancy termination to a woman’s ability to exert agency at a key point in her reproductive life, and argue that refusing women access to the procedure constitutes a grievous health risk. This argument frames pregnancy termination as an issue of empowerment and also as a medical necessity.MethodsThis article is based on ethnographic research conducted in Argentina in 2013 and 2015, which includes in-depth interviews with abortion activists and health professionals and ethnographic observation at activist events and in clinics.ResultsDuring the period of my field research, the medical staff in one clinic shifted from abortion counseling, based on a harm reduction model, to legal pregnancy termination, a new mode of abortion provision where they directly provided abortions based on the legal health exception. These insider activists formalized the latter approach by creating a diagnostic instrument that frames women’s “bio-psycho-social” reasons for wishing to terminate a pregnancy as medically justified.ConclusionsThe clinical practice analyzed in this article raises important questions about the potential for health professionals to take on an activist role by making safe abortion accessible, even in a context where the procedure is highly restricted.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12884-017-1498-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Murga porteña, the satirical street theatre tradition associated with Carnival in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is historically a strongly patriarchal institution. Prominent roles such as reciting poetry, singing, and playing percussion instruments have been reserved exclusively for men. As the feminist movement in Argentina has grown in visibility and importance in recent years, feminist murga participants disrupted these patriarchal patterns. Women murga performers (murgueras) have begun to use murga as a space for feminist practice, both by creating women-only organizations to learn murga skills and by bringing feminist perspectives into mixed-gender murgas. Murgueras are engaged in a multifaceted feminist project that disrupts gendered patterns by building women-only spaces to develop competence in the performance of historically masculine skills such as percussion. Drawing on ethnographic participant-observation of murga events as well as in-depth interviews with key organizers at the confluence of murga and feminism, we explore the ways in which murga has provided the spaces and strategies for collective feminist engagement. Murgas have become important social institutions in which women are “undoing gender” and disseminating feminist perspectives, even as most members join them not as explicitly feminist institutions.
This article analyzes the use of humor as a strategy for claims making and activist identity construction through visual production at face-to-face protests and Internet memes. Humorous visual images can serve multiple social movement purposes, including ridiculing and delegitimizing the opposition, neutralizing opponents’ claims, creating a fun and irreverent group identity, and fostering group cohesion through shared enjoyment. This article explores these issues through a content analysis of visual repertoires of contention in the mobilizations around the proposed legalization of abortion in Argentina in 2018, with a focus on the use of images of fetuses. This case is useful for theorizing the specific uses of humor as a social movement strategy, especially the role it plays in the relationship between two oppositional movements.
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