Transnational Movements, Situated Bodies: Controversies over Contraceptive Safety in the Caribbean, 1960-1990

• In Event: The History and Politics of Reproductive Rights in Latin America

Abstract

In the 1980s, the American-based National Women’s Health Network (NWHN) led a campaign to end the export of Depo-Provera abroad by Upjohn (its American manufacturer) and to ban in particular its use in projects funded by USAID. Activists argued that, since the contraceptive method had failed to obtain FDA approval in the United States due to concerns over its testing and safety, it was unethical to promote it elsewhere. Their campaign gained support from a number of women’s activists in other areas of the world, who testified to the element of coercion, lack of informed consent, and troubling side effects that frequently surrounded the drug. And yet, not all women agreed it should be banned outright; some argued that, in particular local contexts, for particular women, the secrecy and long-acting nature of Depo-provera could outweigh the risks. They thus challenged the idea that the standards of the United States should be applied in the same way everywhere in the world.

Debates over the safety of Depo-Provera and other methods like the pill and IUD that raged throughout the 1960s-1990s thus illustrate vividly one of the central dilemmas of transnational activism: how can these movements claim to speak on behalf of the interests and needs of women internationally, when women’s interests and needs are deeply situated within varying local contexts? How do power relations affect these interactions, and to what extent are less powerful actors – particularly those located in the Global South – able to intervene and shape campaigns initiated in the North?

Using newspaper articles, family planning association records, and local medical reports, my paper will use the Anglophone Caribbean (particularly Jamaica) as a case study to explore these questions. My paper seeks to illuminate how local actors’ understanding of the issues aligned or differed from the narratives promoted by women’s organizations in the U.S. and other areas of the world (particularly Latin America and Africa), in order to illuminate both the grounds for transnational organizing and its complicated nature in practice.

Author

• Nicole C Bourbonnais, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies