Lectio Praecursoria: Life and Abortion: The Post-Biopolitics of Reproductive Health in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Authors

• Mari Valdur University of Helsinki https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3300-5599

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.v45i2.103106

Abstract

The lectio serves as an introduction to the thesis "Life and Abortion: The Post-Biopolitics of Reproductive Health in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia", an ethnographic study of the ways the insecurities and vulnerabilities of informal abortion are produced and maintained in a context where abortion is legal. Throughout the thesis I maintain that the answer to this question has to do with particular and gendered forms of governance rather than individual experiences of the general stigmatisation of abortion. To this effect, the thesis studies six relevant and overlapping spheres in Ulaanbaatar: the nation state and macropolitics; religion, medicine and kinship; care and motherhood; sexuality and knowledge; biomedicine; and the medication market.

Keywords: reproductive health, abortion, gender, governance, Mongolia