From the very beginning of her work, Suh’s book threw me for a loop. On page two, Suh notes that between a quarter and a third of women in Senegalese prisons are there on abortion or infanticide charges. A quarter and a third. Each charged between several months and years. For me, it was one of those moments where I realized how insular the U.S. conversations around the legality of abortion are. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there was so much activism around getting people with uteruses safe abortions and talk about how pills could be shipped to states where abortion was made illegal. However, I realized that I never saw any information about women who were imprisoned because of their abortion decisions or miscarriages, a contrast to what we predicted would happen following Dobbs v. Jackson. This is not to say that the overturning of Roe v. Wade should be compared to the situation in Senegal, but it is to point out that, despite PAC being a global health intervention, U.S.-based activism around abortion does not center around questions of global health, despite the fact that 97% of unsafe abortions happen in developing countries (6). The caveat here is that this is based upon my own interaction with abortion rights activism, much of which has come through work with Planned Parenthood since about 2018. Major legislation such as the Global Gag Rule was genuinely a surprise to me and has made me realize how little I actually know about abortion as a global health issue. Apologies if this note feels obvious to y’all, but I wanted to keep track of my thinking as I thought through why my knowledge on abortion policies globally is so limited.
Now, to less surprise and more critical thinking. Suh’s key argument is grounded in thinking about PAC both mitigates harm while simultaneously exposing uterus havers to obstetric violence (12). Thinking about being entitled to survive abortion but not to do so without bodily and mental harm and strain speaks to the lack of care given to the uterine folx themselves. My understanding here is that PAC, as a part of global reproductive governance, places emphasis on uterine individuals as means of future reproduction more so than as agentic beings that deserve access to safe abortions. So, then, how are we to think about conversations around reproductive sovereignty in ways that decenter neoliberal priorities of cost-effectiveness and privatization (19)? And, furthermore, how can we understand PAC as a means by which peoples’ uteruseseseses are simultaneously violated and decriminalized? And how can we put this question in conversation with the percentage of Senegalese women that are incarcerated because of infanticide or abortion charges?
Anyways, this reading made me realize that I know so little about abortion on a global scale, and how little I have been asked to challenge my own thinking about reproductive rights beyond our state borders. I’m off to go stare at a wall and think through these international systems of policing and surveillance… see y’all on Tuesday!!!!