A Question of Life

The Global Observatory aims to expand the conversations around concepts and norms concerning human life and dignity. Where human life begins and how lives become worthy of state protection are in flux around the world. Abortion struggles in Latin America have created conceptual and political resources that allow us to delve more deeply into these questions from a regional perspective that is less familiar to actors in the Global North. With this workshop, we seek to create a space for discussions that reflect on how what is at stake for women in abortion politics and the moral status of the embryo are being framed and contested in a region with different political and spiritual traditions from those in the United States. We will attend to this bioconstitutional moment in Latin American countries where abortion’s legal status is changing and place these moments in global and historical context. This workshop thus forms part of our ongoing inquiry into the development of a cosmopolitan ethics on questions at the frontiers of life.