Legacies of War: Violence, Ecologies, and Kin by Kimberly Theidon (review)

Abstract

O February 21, 2022, the Colombian Constitutional Court decriminalized abortion within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. This ruling is part of a vital wave of activism for greater reproductive rights in Latin America. The Colombian case follows important victories for the right to decide in Mexico (in the state of Coahuila, to be specific) and in Argentina, where abortion has been legalized for up to 14 weeks of pregnancy. In contrast to this reality are the recent Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade—the 1973 Court landmark decision that made access to safe and legal abortion a constitutional right—and the latest measures toward a near-total abortion ban by more than a dozen U.S. states, including Idaho, Texas, and Tennessee. These recent legal decisions have reignited crucial debates on reproductive justice, defined as the right to bodily autonomy— to decide whether to have children and raise them in a healthy, safe, and sustainable environment. As feminist activists have reminded us, these measures have historically, widely, and disproportionately impacted poor women and women of color, who experience more significant economic and logistical complications in accessing abortion, even in spaces where it is legal or regulated. This is the landscape of reproductive rights in the Americas that informed my reading of Kimberly Theidon’s latest book, Legacies of War: Violence, Ecologies, and Kin, in which the anthropologist considers the “multiple environments in which conception, pregnancy, and childbirth unfold” (7) in times of war and postwar. A feminist ethnography of postconflict based on three decades of fieldwork in Peru and Colombia, two countries embroiled in long-running internal armed conflicts, the book