The biomedicalisation of illegal abortion: the double life of misoprostol in Brazil

Abstract

A biomedicalização do aborto ilegal: a vida dupla do misoprostol no BrasilRecebido para publicação em outubro de 2014. Aprovado para publicação em junho de 2015.http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702016000100003 DE ZORDO, Silvia. The biomedicalisation of illegal abortion: the double life of misoprostol in Brazil. História, Ciências, Saúde -Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro, v.23, n.1, jan.-mar. 2016, p.19-35. Abstract This paper examines the double life of misoprostol in Brazil, where it is illegally used by women as an abortifacient and legally used in obstetric hospital wards. Based on my doctoral and postdoctoral anthropological research on contraception and abortion in Salvador, Bahia, this paper initially traces the "conversion" of misoprostol from a drug to treat ulcers to a self-administered abortifacient in Latin America, and its later conversion to aneclectic global obstetric tool. It then shows how, while reducing maternal mortality, its use as an illegal abortifacient has reinforced the double reproductive citizenship regime existing in countries with restrictive abortion laws and poor post-abortion care services, where poor women using it illegally are stigmatised, discriminated against and exposed to potentially severe health risks.Keywords: illegal abortion; misoprostol; reproductive health; biomedicalisation; Brazil. Resumo

The Erosion of Rights to Abortion Care in the United States: A Call for a Renewed Anthropological Engagement with the Politics of Abortion

“…; De Zordo et al. ; Mishtal ). Similarly, women themselves engage with transnational discourses around rights and modernity in addition to local moral cosmologies to situate their own abortion histories within new articulations of gendered personhood (Amuchástegui and Flores ; Andaya ; Gammeltoft ; Paxson ).…”

“…In the face of this assault on abortion availability and access, we call for anthropologists to engage with this shifting landscape of reproductive politics in the United States (Council on Anthropology and Reproduction ). Anthropologists concerned with the politics of reproduction have examined access and meanings attached to abortion in various global sites (see Andaya ; De Zordo ; Gammeltoft ; Ginsburg ; Johnson‐Hanks ; Mishtal ; Morgan ; Paxson ; Rylko‐Bauer ). In the United States, however, a review of existing scholarship shows that abortion research has largely moved to other fields with more narrowly defined research questions, in particular public health, demography, sociology, and legal studies .…”

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An update on maternal medication‐related embryopathies

“…Children who had been exposed to valproate in utero had significant lower IQ scores compared to the other drugs, an effect that was shown to be dose‐dependent. At 6 years of age those children had reduced verbal and memory abilities 25‐28,40,45‐78 …”