Safe Abortion Manuals in Latin America. Instructions for Avoiding the Healthcare System

RAQUEL IRENE DROVETTA

Bangkok

Congreso; Asia Safe Abortion Partnership, ARJC IV: The Unfinished Revolution; 2024

Faculty of Public Health, Mahidol University, Bangkok-Thailand

The intergenerational transmission of abortion methods has occurred orally through advice exchanged among women, sharing knowledge on how to carry out an abortion with the least possible risk. In this research, we describe a set of actions undertaken by feminist activists aiming to reduce the risks women face when seeking self-managed abortions in legally restricted Latin American countries. Manuals address the medical aspects of abortion. However, due to legal restrictions on accessing abortion, the manuals provide information to ensure women's safety. It involves performing an illegal practice but safely in multiple aspects. Our corpus of analysis consists of graphical materials produced by Latin American feminist organizations from 2009 to the present. We have compiled productions published in Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. The main objective is to recover, compile, compare, and analyze documents from feminist organizations that have authored manuals to disseminate information about self-managing abortion. We seek to closely analyze the production conditions of the texts and demonstrate the specificity of the contribution to scientific knowledge and the intellectual contribution made by feminist organizations about safe abortion.