In the Hands of Trustworthy Men: The Transnational Politics of Manual Vacuum Aspiration in Senegal

• In Event: 472 - Regular Session. Technology

Abstract

Sociologists have demonstrated how technologies participate in the accomplishment of medical work by examining what technologies do. The ‘rightness’ of a technology for completing a particular task is negotiated by medical professionals, patients, state institutions, manufacturing companies, and non-governmental organizations. Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA) is a syringe device for uterine evacuation that can be used to treat complications of incomplete abortion, known as post-abortion care (PAC), or to terminate pregnancy. This study explores the transnational politics of MVA in Senegal, where PAC is permitted but induced abortion is legally prohibited. Although the national health authority has championed MVA as the preferred PAC technology, the primary donor for PAC, the US Agency for International Development, does not support the purchase of abortifacient technologies like MVA. Anxieties about MVA’s capacity to induce abortion have excluded this device from national medical supply systems. This study demonstrates the enactment of transnational MVA politics in the daily treatment of abortion complications in three state hospitals. Findings are based on an ethnography of Senegal’s national PAC program conducted between 2010 and 2011. Data collection methods included interviews with 36 medical professionals, observation of PAC treatment and review of abortion records at three hospitals, and a transnational literature review of MVA and PAC. While MVA was used more frequently than other forms of uterine evacuation, concerns about misusing MVA constrained the utilization and circulation of this device within the hospital. MVA restrictions may reinforce gendered inequalities in health care by limiting women’s access to this ‘preferred’ technology.

Author

• Siri Suh, Columbia University