What is objection made of? Accounts of conscientious objectors to legal abortion services in Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia

Abstract

This article examines conscientious objection (CO) to legal abortion services in Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia. Based on interviews, the analysis offers an alternative from studies focusing on differentiating between CO and access barriers, or in identifying if the reasons for the objections are true or valid. Considering the fact that it is only in very few cases that the objectors knew the legal definition of CO, the article seeks to understand the meanings that the interviewees attribute to their objection, how they organize their medical practices and how they justify their denial to provide abortion services. In all three countries, the interviewees’ main opposition was to women themselves making the decision to interrupt a pregnancy, and how and when to do it. The contingent and variable discourses through which the doctors construct the logic of their CO are made of an unquestioning attachment to controlling gestating bodies; and a default socio-medical understanding of women as mothers, reproductive machines or as fetal life support systems.