Abstract
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.
Highlights
This paper analyzes the strategies used by activist health professionals in Argentina who justify providing abortion despite legal restrictions on the procedure
Seeking an alternative that would overcome the limitations of abortion counseling, the health professionals in this clinic developed and codified the legal pregnancy termination approach
Already in 2013, the insider activists I spoke with were finding that conducting abortion counseling forced them to institutionalize an approach to abortion on legal grounds that was nonexistent in clinic regulations, vaguely defined in health ministry guidelines, and had been completely missing from their professional training
Summary
This 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 article analyzes the work of activist health professionals who dramatically reinterpreted the nation’s abortion law and have created a clinical practice and diagnostic instruments that legitimized and implemented their interpretation These activists argued that access to abortion is central to a woman’s ability to define and carry out her own life plan, and that infringing upon this right has a foreseeable negative impact on a woman’s health that health professionals must seek to mitigate. Because the health professionals I focus on here were playing an activist role from within the government infrastructure, I refer to them as insider activists
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