Kimberly Theidon

https://fletcher.tufts.edu/news-media-mentions/all-news/landmark-ruling-celia-ramos-case-peru

Today the Inter-American Court of Human Rights will read their decision in this historic case. Please let us see justice for Sra. Ramos and her family….and for the estimated 300,000 women forcibly sterilized in Peru.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/es/per%C3%BA-esterilizaciones-forzadas-celia-ramos-durand-fujimori-derechos-sexuales-reproductivos-juicio-corte-interamericana

Such lovely news. Challenging Conceptions was awarded the 2024 Monograph Prize from the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction, the # American Anthropological Association. We had a brilliant group of contributors. Feeling grateful .

“The award seeks to recognize and celebrate recent (published within 3 years of the nomination deadline) collections of anthropological works addressing: human reproduction, reproductive technologies, population policy, birth control and contraception, pregnancy, the study and application of genetics, childbirth, adoption, and the roles of parents, among others. Entries are evaluated on a variety of factors including: overall contribution to anthropology & reproduction, usefulness for teaching, current and historical value for both academic and advocacy work, the strength of the nomination letters, the quality and depth of analysis within the chapters, and the coherence of the volume as a whole.”

Thanks to my wonderful colleagues in Warsaw.

In many human rights documents and much academic literature, silence is presented in the singular and represented as an adversary to the researcher in their quest for ethnographic insight (AKA a juicy bit of news). In contrast to Geertzian optimism regarding “thick description,” I have encountered more opacity than transparency in conducting my research. In contrast to the premise that the anthropologist may peer over the shoulders of the Balinese and read their cultural scripts as the Balinese themselves recite them, fieldwork amidst conflict raises numerous impasses, which may be information of another sort. The webs of significance that people have spun depend as much upon a turn of phrase or a colloquial expression, as they do points of refusal, practices of dissimulation, and silences in the plural. Drawing upon research in Peru and Colombia, I will discuss various secrets that were shared with me, and what those secrets were meant to do.

For a video of the conversation, visit: https://red-lines-red-tapes.ws.uw.edu.pl/keynote-speakers/

Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a threat to all women, and a threat to other genders whose mere identity is a target for the conservative members of the court.  Reproductive justice now firmly takes a proverbial backseat to reproductive justice, and we know from the abundant evidence from research conducted in the US and around the globe that the people who will bear the brunt of this conservative assault on women’s bodily autonomy are women of color, lower income women, and women in rural areas where abortion services were already limited.

These justices do not represent the majority of the US population that, in survey after survey, state their conviction that women have a right to determine their reproductive labor, and who support the right to abortion, even when that right is conditioned upon the preservation of the

mother’s physical and mental health, indications that the fetus has severe abnormalities, or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.  These justices do not represent the “right to life”: they are forced birth extremists who view a woman’s womb as an incubator in service of state interests.

For everyone who thought this matter was settled — who voted cavalierly or did not vote at all — this serves as a reminder that each vote counts and will count for years to come.  #NovemberIsComing.