Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Fairchild, Emily

Keywords

Puerto Rico, Women, Sterilization, Choice, Reproductive Justice

Area of Concentration

Sociology

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to understand how contemporary Puerto Rican feminists make sense of women’s sterilization experiences. In particular, I am interested in how employees and volunteers of a reproductive health organization (ProFamilias, the longest-standing organization for sexual and reproductive health in Puerto Rico) relate to dominant sterilization narratives, which discuss Puerto Rican women’s experiences through a framework of individual choice. With Choice as an analytical lens, women’s experiences are categorized into ones of agency and victimhood. An alternative framework is Reproductive Justice, which opposes the focus on the individual by addressing the impact of reproductive oppressions on women’s fertility decisions. Using in-depth interview data, I analyze whether participants’ understandings reflect a Choice or Reproductive Justice Framework. Participants' responses indicate a nuanced understanding of the conditions in which Puerto Rican women got sterilized. They described women’s reproductive decisions as ‘choice within constraints.’ These constraints include poverty, motherhood ideals, unequal or lack of access to health care, education, and misinformation, among others. Participants’ understandings reflect a Reproductive Justice framework. These contemporary perspectives add an alternative to existing scholarship on Puerto Rican sterilization narratives.

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