Safe Mothers, Criminal Women: Post-abortion Care and the Transnational Production of Motherhood in Senegal

• In Event: 541 - Section on Medical Sociology Paper Session. Health, Medicine and Sexualities

Abstract

Post-abortion care represents an important site for the medical surveillance of women’s sexuality in Senegal. Developed in the early 1990s by American reproductive rights organizations, the global post-abortion care model aims to reduce mortality and morbidity from complications of unsafe abortion in countries with restrictive abortion laws. Post-abortion care offers quality and humane treatment to women irrespective of the type or legal status of abortion. In Senegal, induced abortion is prohibited under any circumstance. Post-abortion care has been available at public hospitals since the late 1990s. I conducted an institutional ethnography of the national post-abortion care program between 2009 and 2011. I interviewed 36 health providers, observed treatment and reviewed records at three hospitals, and reviewed nearly 25 years of court records documenting the prosecution of illegal abortion. In contrast to the non-discriminatory treatment ethic of the global post-abortion care model, Senegalese health professionals use the “interrogation” (patient interview) to identify women suspected of having illegal abortions. The moral interpretation of bodily and behavioral characteristics engenders the notion of the typical post-abortion care patient: a mother suffering complications of miscarriage of a purportedly desired pregnancy. The production of motherhood represents a form of professional boundary work over obstetric care. Medical providers categorize post-abortion care patients as mothers in order to avoid police investigation at the hospital. At the same time, providers police the boundaries of appropriate female sexuality by punishing those suspected of sexual deviance --often young, unmarried and poor--through repeated questioning, threats and retention at the hospital.

Author

• Siri Suh, University of Minnesota