FROM THE STRUGGLE FOR LEGAL ABORTION TO AN ETHICS OF RISK: FEMINIST ACCOMPANIMENT TO ABORTION IN THE CONTEXT OF CONTEMPORARY AND DECOLONIAL STRUGGLES FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE

Abstract

In this paper, I seek to situate the emergence of a dispositif of feminist accompaniment of abortion within a complex strategic situation, in which multiple power relations are codified to give rise to the current set of narratives and policies on sexuality and reproduction. Inspired by the Foucauldian proposal of an analytics of power relations, I sought to observe some of the ways in which the dispositif of accompaniment unravels and challenges dispositifs of sexuality, maternity, raciality and coloniality operated by biopower in the neoliberal context. To do so, I carried out a multi-sited ethnography of abortion companions’ collectives in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2016 and 2021. I argue that, by positioning abortion accompaniment as a collective political act of direct action, feminist companions build alternative forms of activism for reproductive justice, beyond the struggles for the legalization of abortion or harm reduction policies. The reflections hereby presented emerge from a set of narratives that are transformed and lived out in the varied experiences of resistance of abortion companions, for whom having an abortion is a political act and so is accompanying.