ABSTRACT

This article sheds light on an important facet of the history of abortion in Mexico: that is, moments in which doctors and priests reconciled the termination of pregnancy with religious ideologies, thus refracting the concept of abortion through a Catholic lens at different points in time. By underscoring ambivalences in the definition, implementation, and criminalization of abortive procedures, the research demonstrates that Mexican physicians periodically renamed or reconceptualized abortive procedures, thereby legitimizing them while constructing and reimagining the meaning of abortion itself. This allowed doctors to make fertility control compatible with religious ideologies and therefore legible to a range of spiritual and state authorities, but generally without overt challenges to Catholic claims about fetal life. The article argues that these historical cultures of Catholicized abortion—or, to use Morgan and Roberts’s term, ‘regime[s] of moral governance’—laid the historical groundwork for today’s chasm between practice and law.

摘要

这篇文章揭示了墨西哥堕胎历史的一个重要方面：即医生和牧师将终止妊娠与宗教意识形态调和的时刻，从而在不同时间点通过天主教的镜头折射堕胎的概念。通过强调堕胎程序的定义、实施和刑事定罪中的矛盾，该研究表明，墨西哥医生定期重新命名或重新概念化堕胎程序，从而在构建和重新想象堕胎本身的意义的同时使它们合法化。这使医生能够使生育控制与宗教意识形态相容，因此对一系列精神和国家当局来说是易读的，但通常不会对天主教关于胎儿生命的主张提出公开挑战。