ABSTRACT
This chapter draws out the crucial role that opposition to abortion played in motivating and legitimating Colombia’s family planning policies. In studying the discourses surrounding family planning in 1960s Colombia, focusing on a close reading of 1967 Colombian Senate hearings attacking the first national family planning policy, the author shows how proponents for family planning policies presented contraceptive education and access as a crucial intervention for decreasing abortions among Colombian women. Although those for and against family planning policies disagreed over a great deal – whether lowering the fertility rate was necessary to achieve social and economic development, to what extent the state should be involved in the family – they were largely united in condemning abortion as unsafe and immoral, which ultimately helped justify family planning initiatives.
