Jun 10, 2026
Talk: On Abortion Pills in General, and “Misoprostol in Brazil” in Particular
- 14:00 to 16:00
- Colloquium
- Ilana Löwy
In the aftermath of the introduction of severe restrictions on abortion in several US states, some activists have argued that providing widespread access to an abortive drug, misoprostol, will transform an induced abortion into a fully private act and therefore will empower women. In Brazil, where abortion is criminalized, the majority of women who wish to terminate an unwanted pregnancy already use the illegal, but easily accessible, misoprostol. In her talk »On Abortion Pills in General, and Misoprostol in Brazil in Particular« renowned historian of biomedical sciences Ilana Löwy examines the history of misoprostol as an abortifacient in Brazil from the late 1980s until today and the professional debates on the teratogenicity of this drug. The effects of a given pharmaceutical compound, she argues, are always articulated, elicited, and informed within dense networks of sociocultural, economic, legal, and political settings. In a conservative and repressive environment, the use of misoprostol for self-induced abortions, even when supported by formal or informal solidarity networks, is far from being a satisfactory solution to the curbing of women’s reproductive rights.
About Ilana
Ilana Löwy (she/her) is a senior researcher emerita at INSERM (The French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) and affiliated with CERMES-3, Paris. Trained as a biologist, she then retrained as a historian of science and medicine. Her main research topics are past and present relationships between laboratory sciences, clinical medicine, and public health in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. She studied the history of immunology, infectious diseases, tropical medicine, oncology, and reproductive medicine, and she is especially interested in the intersections between biomedicine and gender. Ilana Löwy published lately Imperfect Pregnancies: A History of Birth Defects and Prenatal Diagnosis (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), Tangled Diagnoses, Women, Prenatal Testing and Risk (Chicago University Press, 2018), and Viruses and Reproductive Injustice: Zika in Brazil (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024). She studies now Long Covid in France and Brazil from a historical, sociological, and gender studies perspective.
Photo: "Package of pills." Source: Ms. Magazine
Contact and Registration
The MPIWG Gender Colloquium 2025/26 is open to all: academics, students, and members of the public are all welcome to attend, listen, and participate in the discussion. Please register here: gleichstellung@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
About This Series
Evidently, feminist progress and male violence grow concurrently: the feminist paradox signifies that the more equal women become, the more hatred and violence they face. Today we can see misogyny —Frauenhass in German—everywhere, including new forms of violence such as cyberbullying. It is a proven fact that misogynist violence is constantly on the rise—that is, violence specifically directed at women, such as domestic violence, femicide, sexual assault, stalking, hate speech, and pathological attempts to control their lives.
Women’s right to make decisions about their bodies should be self-evident, yet it is enshrined in law in only a few countries around the world. Historical trajectories show that reproductive biases are aligned along the axes of class, race, ethnicity, and gender. Hence, we use reproductive rights as a common, intersectional thread to investigate the backlash against feminism, which has culminated in an ever-increasing onslaught. There can be no doubt that the current backlash against women’s rights goes hand-in-hand with the rise of far-right extremism.
The 2025/26 Gender Colloquium at the Institute brings together scholars and professionals from the medical and biomedical sciences, public health institutions, media and film, political and legal sciences, and the humanities to confront the issues of abortion, early marriage and female genital cutting, femicide, forced sterilization, #MeToo, and reproductive regimes.