Abortion through the prism of "care" in Belgium

Abortion covers a plurality of practices, techniques, personal experiences and life trajectories. Considering the psycho-medico-social supervision as a space between the intimacy of women's bodies and lives on the one hand, and the normative space of politics on the other, this research project raises the question how care relationships and life trajectories articulate in this space which is characterized by technico-medical, political and personal relations. An approach through the concept of "care" opens a new empirical field in the study of abortion that allows analyzing in different abortion centres the practices of professionals, the life courses of women and, since the COVID crisis in Belgium, the increase of abortions by medication. This sociological research will shed new light on the social and political debate that is characterized by a tension between psycho-medico-social supervision and women's autonomy or free choice. The research project proposes to shift the terms of the discussion from debates about the principle of autonomous choice to an empirical analysis of care practices. Rather than a principle of law or bioethics that would impose its own conditions of felicity, autonomy could be conceptualized as that which a person becomes capable of through meaningful and situated relations of care. The empirical study will take place in different abortion centres in the three regions of the country. The project mobilizes qualitative and participatory methodologies, as well as life stories that place abortion in the context of life courses and mobilize affective and relational dimensions in a way that is unprecedented in the sociological literature.

Thesis realised by Luce Lebrun under the co-supervision of Kim Hendrickx and Mona Claro