Entre Nosotras Nos Cuidamos: Feminist Abortion Accompaniment in Chile
- Matteson, Emily
- Advisor(s): Jenks, Angela
Abstract
In Chile, abortion is decriminalized in extremely limited cases, resulting in the widespread, yet still fairly clandestine, usage of the medication abortion pill misoprostol by individuals seeking to terminate an undesired pregnancy. This dissertation examines the activist practice of feminist abortion accompaniment, a radical activist approach to abortion care that provides informational, physical, and emotional support for people pursuing a medication abortion, regardless of the legal context. In contrast to dominant models of abortion activism that prioritize advocating for legal rights to abortion, abortion accompaniment activists reject the idea that medical and state institutions are reliable guarantors of dignified care. This political positioning has led them to develop their own models of care that reimagine the boundaries of the political and the ethical, formed in a commitment to women and the realities of abortions that are happening in Chile right now. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork in both Valparaiso and Santiago, Chile, as well as virtual ethnography with abortion accompaniment activists during the COVID-19 pandemic, I examine the complex ways that accompaniment activists navigate questions of care as they accompany people through their abortion experiences. I explore the the embodied practice of accompaniment, the activist identity of the “feminist friend,” the impact of obstetric violence in medical systems on women’s experiences of reproductive care, and opportunities for collective organizing during Chile’s 2019 social uprising. Ultimately, I conclude that for abortion accompaniment activists, care is a practice, it is relational, it is political, and its reliance on interdependence is crucial to the imagining of new worlds. Examining abortion accompaniment through an analysis of care reveals the ways that feminist accompaniment activists address perceived failures of care by state and medical institutions through an active reimagining of new relations, conditions, and practices of abortion care.