Bodies in Dispute: Feminist Abortion Care and Global Reproductive Health Politics in Mexico (New Writing in Critical Development Studies)

Drawing on extensive, in-depth ethnographic work in Mexico, Madeleine Belfrage demonstrates in this open access book how Global-North-dominated reproductive health programs help to govern women’s bodies and how Latin American feminists are responding with new, innovative ideas and routes to abortion access. Belfrage takes us on a journey through abortion access routes in Mexico, where the state refuses to guarantee access to abortion and women face intense gendered violence and other structural barriers.Here, we find, grassroots feminist activists are operating outside international reproductive health programs to provide information and pills so people can carry out abortions safely at home.By using Latin-American grassroots feminist concepts to understand these practices, Belfrage helps decolonize Global-North-dominated understandings of bodily autonomy and abortion care, and ultimately turns a critical eye to the ways the very systems that seek to advance women’s rights risk undermi