Does she actually decide? : the role of birth control in the empowerment of underprivileged women in the global South.

Abstract

In January 2017 US President Trump decided to cut US family planning aid targeting abortion services in the Global South. This decision provoked former Minister of Foreign Trade and International Development of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Mrs. Lilianne Ploumen, to initiate SheDecides. SheDecides is a lobby movement that aims to raise awareness and unlock resources for contraception and abortion services in the Global South. The movement implies that if women have access to contraception and abortion services they can make individual decisions concerning their bodies, (reproductive) lives and futures. In this project I argue that access to contraception and abortion services does not constitute the key to the empowerment of underprivileged women in the Global South. Underprivileged women often suffer from the effects of sexism, racism, poverty, war, and occupation simultaneously and therefore it is impossible that access to contraception and abortion services alone will enable these women to be ‘free.’ In order to realize these women’s empowerment SheDecides has to approach these women’s lives and suffering from an intersectional perspective and challenge all sources of oppression concurrently. SheDecides’ proposed interventions only tackle the legality and availability of contraception and abortion services, without ensuring that women have equal access to the same high quality services. SheDecides does not focus on its end goals, healthier and empowered women, families and communities, but only on the execution of its proposed interventions. For this reason its ideals can easily be hijacked by (governmental) actors who share an interest in SheDecides’ proposed interventions while having different motivations in mind. I argue that TNCs and (governmental) actors in the Global North support SheDecides’ proposed interventions because they see contraception and abortion services as tools to lower fertility rates among underprivileged women in the Global South and therefo