Islamic Revival, Structural Violence and Women’s Right to Abortion in Tunisia after the Revolution

Since 1973, all Tunisian women can get an abortion for free, despite their marital status, at government family planning clinics. The liberalization of abortion was part of the demographic policy launched by the postcolonial state to limit the birth rate in the country. Free contraception, abortion, and family planning campaigns effectively transformed reproductive behaviours of Tunisian families within a few decades. After the revolution of 2011, the Islamic party Ennahda won the elections for the Constituent Assembly and kept itself in power until February 2014. During this period the right to abortion and other women’s rights were put into question and feminist organizations fought against the conservative forces dominating the political arena. Financial cuts in government sectors related to the severe economic crisis Tunisia is going through since almost ten years play also a role in women’s access to abortion and contraception services. On the one hand, some clinics are underequipped and understaffed; on the other, women who live in rural areas far from the main urban centres are in the impossibility of reaching family planning clinics. The economic crisis and political troubles Tunisia is going through interact in a complex way with political, religious and moral factors eliciting socioeconomic discriminations and the denial of women’s reproductive and sexual rights. Drawing on a 10-month ethnographic fieldwork (August 2013-June 2010), in this paper I will describe the troublesome abortion itineraries of underprivileged Tunisian women, investigating the economic, political, social, and ideological causes at the origin of the obstacles the face.