The Transnational Politics of Abortion

Abstract

IN MOST DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, abortion has only recently emerged as a public policy issue. Even in countries that have had active population and family planning programs, influence of traditional pronatalist culture and inherited colonial laws has limited frequency of induced abortion and has discouraged organized efforts to expand availability of services. In recent decades, however, changing social conditions have increasingly challenged traditional norms. Urbanization, increases in female education and labor-force participation, and inadequate contraceptive services in many developing countries have resulted in more unwanted pregnancies than ever before and have led increased numbers of women to seek to terminate their pregnancies, often at severe risk to their lives and health. i Changes have also occurred in political and legal environment. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Turkey are among developing countries where de jure or de facto abortion policies have become subjects of new or renewed conflict in recent years.2 Not all of these conflicts have resulted in legal changes, although some 20 developing countries have revised their abortion laws and regulations since 1980, most of them in direction of expanding indications for abortion (Cook, 1989; Henshaw, 1990). In past, politics of abortion in most developing countries tended to conform to a pattern once characterized by an American political analyst as the mobilization of bias. As he put it, Some issues are organized into politics while others are organized out (Schattschneider, 1960: 71). In effect, when powerful institutions do not consider a change in existing policy (or nonpolicy) as being in their interest, issue in question is unlikely to be addressed. This situation is still true for abortion-related questions in some countries and in some decisionmaking arenas. Yet, as overall political competition increases in many countries, and as previously excluded groups gain access to mass media and assume a greater political role, abortion issues are becoming more visible than they were in past. The pressures for change in official policies or administrative practices come from mul-