AFRICA AT NOON: POST-ABORTION CARE AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS IN SENEGAL

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Siri Suh

Assistant Professor of Sociology

BIO

Siri Suh is a medical sociologist with research interests in global maternal and reproductive health, population and development, and feminist and postcolonial studies of science, medicine, and technology. Her research has been funded by the American Association of University Women, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She has conducted research on maternal and reproductive health with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Guttmacher Institute, and Management Sciences for Health (MSH).

Siri’s interest in post-abortion care (the treatment of complications of incomplete or unsafe abortion) was kindled during her work as a public health professional with an NGO in Senegal, a West African country where induced abortion is prohibited under any circumstance and the US government has supported family planning since the early 1980s. Her research explores how post-abortion care statistics from government hospitals contribute to reproductive governance. Drawing on an ethnography of the national post-abortion care program, Siri illustrates how medical workers, health officials, and NGO personnel selectively establish evidence about the kinds of women who receive life-saving obstetric care in hospitals; what post-abortion care technologies accomplish in these facilities; and the impact of post-abortion care on the epidemiology of maternal mortality.