Expert Knowledge in the Debates about the Law of Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy in Chile

Abstract

The discussion in Chile of Law No. 21.030 on the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy articulated debates both in the National Congress and in the Constitutional Court, to which various experts on the issues involved in the law were summoned. Considering that the study of the heterogeneity of the debates is useful to characterize the type of controversies that they address and to evaluate the goodness of the settlements reached, the records of participation in the minutes of the sessions of the parliamentary committees and the public hearings of Constitutional Court were analyzed in this study in order to verify the internal composition and the modes of representation of expert knowledge in these debates. The findings of the study show a symmetrical recognition of individuals and institutions representing this knowledge, the social structures from which it emerged, and the variable intensity of its diversity in the instances of debate.