Gendered Wounds: On Abortion and Partnership in Cuba

Abstract

For fifty years, first-trimester abortion has been steadily available, legal, safe, and cost-free in Cuba. But in the context of enduring gender disparity, societal attitudes surrounding the procedure vary widely. Women’s often-recurring use of abortion evokes sexual emancipation for some, while others see abortion as a wound that men inflict on women. Men and women express a variety of emotional and practical concerns that highlight the complexity and dynamic nature of the issue. Drawing on ethnographic research from 2016 to 2020, this article argues that men and women’s influences on one another are central to the ways in which abortion is “lived” and to the process of determining abortion’s intimate significance. Whether abortion is experienced as a normalized practice or viewed as something that could never be “normal,” a thorough consideration of men and women’s shared generation of this meaning is crucial to understanding the place of abortion in Cuban society.