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What post-abortion care indicators don't measure: Global abortion politics and obstetric practice in Senegal

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  • Suh, Siri

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, post-abortion care (PAC) has been advocated as a harm reduction approach to maternal mortality and morbidity in countries with restrictive abortion laws. PAC indicators demonstrate that the intervention integrates safer uterine aspiration technology such as the Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA) syringe into obstetric practice and facilitates task-shifting from physicians to midwives. In other words, PAC not only saves women's lives, but more generally enhances the organization, quality, and cost-effectiveness of obstetric care. This article draws on my ethnography of Senegal's PAC program, conducted between 2010 and 2011, to illustrate how PAC indicators obscure the professional and technological complexities of treating abortion complications in contexts where abortion is illegal. Data collection methods include observation of PAC services and records at three hospitals; 66 in-depth interviews with health workers, government health officials, and NGO personnel; and a review of national and global PAC data. I show how anxieties about the capacity of the MVA syringe to induce abortion have engendered practices and policies that compromise the quality and availability of care throughout the health system. I explore the multivalent power of MVA statistics in strategically conveying commitments to national and global maternal mortality reduction agendas while eliding profound gaps in access to and quality of care for low-income and rural women. I argue that PAC strategies, technologies, and indicators must be situated within a global framework of reproductive governance, in which safe abortion has been omitted from maternal and reproductive health care associated with reproductive rights. Ethnographic attention to daily obstetric practices challenges globally circulating narratives about PAC as an apolitical intervention, revealing not only how anxieties about abortion ironically suppress the very rates of MVA utilization that purportedly convey PAC quality, but also how they simultaneously give rise to and obscure obstetric violence against women.

Suggested Citation

  • Suh, Siri, 2020. "What post-abortion care indicators don't measure: Global abortion politics and obstetric practice in Senegal," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 254(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:254:y:2020:i:c:s0277953619301947
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.03.044
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Suh, Siri, 2015. "“Right tool,” wrong “job”: Manual vacuum aspiration, post-abortion care and transnational population politics in Senegal," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 56-66.
    2. Billings, Deborah L. & Crane, Barbara B. & Benson, Janie & Solo, Julie & Fetters, Tamara, 2007. "Scaling-up a public health innovation: A comparative study of post-abortion care in Bolivia and Mexico," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(11), pages 2210-2222, June.
    3. Graham, Wendy J. & Campbell, Oona M. R., 1992. "Maternal health and the measurement trap," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 967-977, October.
    4. Suh, Siri, 2014. "Rewriting abortion: Deploying medical records in jurisdictional negotiation over a forbidden practice in Senegal," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 20-33.
    5. Melberg, Andrea & Diallo, Abdoulaye Hama & Storeng, Katerini T. & Tylleskär, Thorkild & Moland, Karen Marie, 2018. "Policy, paperwork and ‘postographs’: Global indicators and maternity care documentation in rural Burkina Faso," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 28-35.
    6. Izugbara, Chimaraoke O. & Egesa, Carolyne & Okelo, Rispah, 2015. "‘High profile health facilities can add to your trouble’: Women, stigma and un/safe abortion in Kenya," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 9-18.
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