This fall Waterloo welcomed four new AMTD Postdoctoral Fellows, including Dr. Elena Caruso. Based in the Department of Political Science, Caruso’s research aims to question the role of the state in the regulation of abortion, to reshape dominant legal paradigms in abortion care, and to draw important lessons for the future of health technologies. Caruso’s research is supervised by Dr. Alana Cattapan, Canada Reseach Chair in the Politics of Reproduction
The AMTD Waterloo Global Talent Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is made possible through a generous donation from the AMTD Foundation, led by Waterloo alum Calvin Choi (BA ’01). AMTD fellowship provide financial support to postdoctoral scholars with the goal of fostering boundless opportunities to develop research and scholarship at Waterloo.
Dr. Caruso’s lay abstract provides context for her program of research:
“The end of the constitutional protection of abortion rights in the United States has catalysed a re-examination of the role of the state and international organisations in the regulation of abortion. Newly imposed restrictions have drawn attention to self-managed abortions (SMA)—the termination of pregnancy outside of medical settings—and recently, this practice has largely taken place using abortion pills (e.g., mifepristone and misoprostol) through the support of telehealth/telemedicine services, the use of which is recommended by the World Health Organization (2022). Canada-based SMA actors Women on Web and Women Help Women are online abortion pill providers that operate on a global scale, using accredited doctors to prescribe and supply the pills (Sheldon 2018). This SMA activism has mitigated the negative effects of anti-abortion laws and has proven that illegal abortions can be safe, offering important lessons for the future provision of abortion care (Erdman et al. 2018). The study examines illegal SMA in a liberal context. Italy provides an ideal setting for this work as, despite abortion being legal, a growing number of women are seeking illegal SMA (Brandell et al. 2021).
"The proposed research locates this return of illegal SMA in an historical perspective, as a practice that had previously challenged Fascist anti-abortion laws, then had seemingly largely disappeared once abortion was legalised in 1978. However, today SMA represents a new paradigm of care, requiring an innovative approach to abortion law, which takes account of health technologies to transcend national boundaries. This project aims to question the role of the state in the regulation of abortion, to reshape dominant legal paradigms in abortion care, and to draw important lessons for the future of health technologies. It thus contributes to a new field of inquiry into the regulation of SMA, by combining an innovative historical analysis and novel engagements with international law.”