Misoprostol

The Social Life of a Life-saving Drug in Global Maternal Health

Bibliographic Data

ID5337639
AuthorsM E Macdonald (0000-0002-8432-5544, York University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume46
Issue2
Pages376-401
Publication date2021-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243920916781
OpenAlexW3023751098
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited42

This paper is about a drug called misoprostol and its controversial clinical and social lives. Although originally developed as a prevention for gastric ulcers, in the 1980s, it developed an off-label reputation as an abortifacient. The drug's association with clandestine abortion has profoundly shaped its social life as a marginal and suspect character in the realm of global maternal and reproductive health where it has the potential to prevent two major causes of maternal death--postpartum hemorrhage and unsafe abortion. The social life of misoprostol has also been shaped by the question of authoritative practice, that is, the question of who can deliver medicine. Both issues are about the specters of misuse of misoprostol: off-label, illegal, immoral, or by unlicensed providers. In this paper, I focus ethnographically on two women's health nongovernmental organizations that have been conducting clinical testing and advocacy for the use of misoprostol for reproductive indications in global maternal health settings. Drawing on the notions of pharmaceutical activism and protocol feminism, I describe and analyze how the tools of evidence and authoritative practice have been reassembled in new networks of expertise toward the social justice goals of life, access, and dignity for women

Abortion · Dignity · Environmental health · Family planning · Misoprostol · Political science · Population · Pregnancy · Public relations · Reproductive health · Reproductive rights · Unsafe abortion · Global Maternal and Child Health · Law · Maternal and Perinatal Health Interventions · Medicine · Prenatal Substance Exposure Effects

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