Accounting for abortion: Accomplishing transnational reproductive governance through post-abortion care in Senegal

Suh, Siri

doi:10.1080/17441692.2017.1301513

Cited by 36 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 67 publications

(64 reference statements)

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“…14 The provision of contraception became legal in 1980 when the 1920 law was repealed, while abortion is still heavily criminalised today in Senegal. 15 The 1980s were dominated by two key FP programmes, both implemented by the Senegal Association for Family Well-being (ASBEF) which is affiliated to the International Planned Parenthood Federation. These suggest that "family well-being" may have been used as a translation of "family planning" at that time.…”

Section: Locating Nef In the Family Well-being Approach In Senegalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical insights on the demographic concept of “birth spacing”: locating Nef in family well-being, bodies, and relationships in Senegal

Duclos

Cavallaro

Ndoye

et al. 2019

Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters

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Birth spacing has emerged since the early 1980s as a key concept to improve maternal and child health, triggering interest in birth spacing practices in low-income countries, and drawing attention to prevailing norms in favour of long birth intervals in West Africa. In Senegal, the Wolof concept of Nef, which means having children too closely spaced in time, is morally condemned and connotes a resulting series of negative implications for family well-being. While Nef and "birth spacing" intersect in key ways, including acknowledging the health benefits of longer birth intervals, they are not translations of each other, for each is embedded in distinct broader cultural and political assumptions about social relations. Most notably, proponents of the demographic concept of birth spacing assume that the practice of using contraception after childbearing to postpone births could contribute to "empowering" women socially. In Senegal, by contrast, preventing Nef (or short birth intervals) is also viewed as strengthening family well-being by allowing women to care more fully for their family. This paper draws on policy documents and interviews to explore women's and men's understanding of Nef, and in turn critically reflect on the demographic concept of birth spacing. Our findings reinforce the relevance of the concept of birth spacing to engage with women and men around family planning services in Senegal. Accounts of the Nef taboo in Senegal also show that social norms stigmatising short birth intervals can legitimise constraints faced by women on control of their body.

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Section: Locating Nef In the Family Well-being Approach In Senegalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical insights on the demographic concept of “birth spacing”: locating Nef in family well-being, bodies, and relationships in Senegal

Duclos

Cavallaro

Ndoye

et al. 2019

Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters

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“…The intersection of single motherhood and clandestine abortion with infant and maternal mortality makes these issues of broader relevance. Like other developing countries, Morocco prioritized meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which mainstreamed and politicized maternal health in the Global South (Bowen ; Browner and Sargent ; DeJong ; Foley ; Jaffré and Prual ; Lane ; Suh , ). Although the MDGs do not specify access to abortion, everyday actors discursively linked government aspirations to achieve the MDGs with clandestine abortion.…”

Section: The Politics Of Countingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Statistics were far from illuminating for my interlocutors because it was unclear what, exactly, they quantified. These slippages demonstrate how statistics, particularly those relating to reproduction, are inherently political tools (Berry ; Greenhalgh ; Kanaaneh ; Kligman ; Suh ).…”

Section: The Politics Of Countingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“There Is a Big Question Mark”: Managing Ambiguity in a Moroccan Maternity Ward

Newman

2019

Med Anthropol Q

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In Morocco, where extramarital sex and abortion are illegal, single mothers’ ambiguous status before the law inflects medical decision‐making. Leaky boundaries between the court and the hospital required doctors and administrators to work with multiple forms of documentation while anticipating external surveillance. Gaps between everyday experience and legalized forms of identity created confusion across multiple institutions. When discussing single mothers, hospital staff often spoke of “question marks” that flagged tensions between legibility and liability, disappearance and documentation. Managing question marks ramified surveillance and categorization. Ultimately, however, attempts to administratively resolve single mothers’ ambiguity created gaps and inconsistencies that allowed vulnerable patients to disappear from view.

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“…In her research on medical records in boundary work over the treatment of complications of spontaneous and induced abortion in Senegal, Siri Suh (2014Suh ( , 2017 shows that jurisdictional disputes are key sites that need to be ethnographically investigated, to make sense of how health providers engage with legal contexts and professional obligations to treat cases of suspected cases of illegal abortion in Senegal. By doing so, she demonstrates that clinical, legal and bureaucratic spheres routinely intersect, and that the quality of care provided to women can only be improved if we take into account the conflicting normative environments that providers negotiate.…”

Section: Envisioned Diaries: Researching the Pyramidal Bureaucracies mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why didn’t you write this in your diary? Or how nurses (mis)used clinic diaries to (re)claim shared reflexive spaces in Senegal

Duclos

Ndoye²,

Faye³

et al. 2019

Critique of Anthropology

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Between 2015 and 2017, we implemented the clinic diaries project as part of the qualitative component of an evaluation of a supply chain intervention for family planning in Senegal. This project combined different tools including the diaries and participatory workshops with nurses. At the intersection between writings and silences, this paper explores the role played by the clinic diaries to mediate ethnographic encounters, and the iterative nature of ‘doing fieldwork’ to produce knowledge in hierarchical health systems. This paper also reflects on the processes through which the diaries created a space where accounts of lived experiences routinely unfolding in health facilities could be shared, in the context of a health system increasingly dominated by metrics, performances and vertical reporting mechanisms. The clinic diaries research process therefore sheds light on the limits of approaching bureaucratic norms and practices as coming from the top, an approach reinforced by data reporting and coordination mechanisms in the Senegalese pyramidal health system. In contrast, the diaries suggest a role for participative ethnography to identify collegial spaces to reflect on shared experiences in and of bureaucratic spaces.

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Accounting for abortion: Accomplishing transnational reproductive governance through post-abortion care in Senegal

Cited by 36 publications

References 67 publications

Critical insights on the demographic concept of “birth spacing”: locating Nef in family well-being, bodies, and relationships in Senegal

Critical insights on the demographic concept of “birth spacing”: locating Nef in family well-being, bodies, and relationships in Senegal

“There Is a Big Question Mark”: Managing Ambiguity in a Moroccan Maternity Ward

Why didn’t you write this in your diary? Or how nurses (mis)used clinic diaries to (re)claim shared reflexive spaces in Senegal

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