“Neither the partner, nor the family or the Church can decide for me”: the experience of Catholic women with abortion

Abstract

The Catholic Church is one of the social actors that have historically contributed to the control of bodies, conceiving abortion as a sin and a crime. However, the diversity of experiences about religion accounts for a plural spectrum, which does not always translate into guilt-inducing experiences about sexuality. This work analyzes, through narratives of Catholic women who aborted, the ways in which they negotiate this experience with their religious identity. Adopting a qualitative methodology and biographical approach, ten interviews were conducted with women of different ages and social sectors. The diverse ways in which abortion and religiosity are articulated in each biography were explored, as well as the different negotiations between religiosity and abortion: of those who politicize the experience, as well as of those who rework and re-signify their religiosity.