3/11/2021
Women’s Experiences Matter? Natalie Kimball’s An Open Secret: The History of Unwanted Pregnancy and Abortion in Modern Bolivia
Historians in the News
Women’s experiences matter – this simple truth is at the core of Natalie Kimball’s brilliant new exploration into the tragic history of unwanted pregnancy and abortion in highland Bolivia over the past sixty years. As Kimball so eloquently argues in her book
An Open Secret: The History of Unwanted Pregnancy and Abortion in Modern Bolivia, Bolivian women’s intimate experiences with unwanted pregnancy and abortion matter for three reasons. Most broadly, they shaped reproductive policies and services in highland Bolivia between 1952 and 2010, the years her study analyzes. These experiences also reveal the “deeply ambivalent attitudes about women, and about sexuality more broadly” in urban Bolivia. But, most importantly, as Kimball writes, “women’s experiences matter simply because they occur” (3).