Contingency of Passion, Forced Pregnancy and Women’s Decision

Abstract

This text provides the theoretical/conceptual framework and the core topics of a published research study (this text being the first chapter). The research aimed at discussing abortion as a clandestine social practice in Argentina, based on the narratives of women and men from different social segments and of different ages. It is a sociocritical analysis particularly focusing on the poetics and politics of narratives which, cross-sectionally, constitute a collective énonciation about the social practice of abortion. This text describes how language, power and subjectivities (politics of gender and sexuality) connect in relation to voluntary abortion. Delegitimizing operations on women’s decisions about their own bodies and sexuality are analyzed, together with the complex modes in which those pressures are defied, opening up new possibilities.