In the US, unintended pregnancy has been constructed as a social problem using various frames, including moral and religious frames, economic frames, and, contemporarily, public health frames. Through philanthropic and political funding, large-scale contraceptive interventions seek to solve the problem of unintended pregnancy through individual-level use of long-acting reversible contraception. In this article, I detail a brief history of problematising unintended pregnancy in the US before describing its latest evolution: a social-media-worthy empowerment opportunity. While we have shifted from images of the ‘unwed teen mother’ and ‘welfare queen’ to the image of the empowered ‘boss babe’, the same populations of women are still problematised. The era of social media and the image of the ‘boss babe’ make this problematisation more palatable yet still perpetuate the marginalisation and reproductive coercion of minoritised populations of women.
While most Portuguese colonies moved towards independence through decolonisation managed by Lisbon’s provisional government, Portuguese Timor followed a markedly different trajectory. A growing body of interpretation attributes the collapse of decolonisation primarily to Fretilin’s absence from the Macau Summit. This article challenges that view by locating the breakdown of decolonisation in the wider political field that preceded Macau. Rather than reducing the failure of decolonisation to a single episode, it traces it to the period from the Carnation Revolution of April 1974 to Indonesia’s invasion on 7 December 1975. The article draws on Portuguese and Australian diplomatic records, contemporary reporting, memoirs, and the existing historiography. The article argues that the decisive problem was not one absence alone but the cumulative effect of political drift in Lisbon, competing Timorese projects, Indonesian intervention and Cold War alignments that progressively narrowed the space for an autonomous Timorese outcome. By reconstructing these interlocking dynamics, the article offers a broader explanation for the failed decolonisation of Portuguese Timor and for the contested exercise of self-determination in 1974–75.
Between the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in April 1974 and the Indonesian invasion of East Timor on 7 December 1975, the Australian government lobbied extensively for an Indonesian intervention in East Timor. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam argued directly to Indonesian President Suharto that independence would be unviable and defended Indonesian actions both domestically and internationally while the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs confidentially liaised with Indonesian intelligence regarding covert Indonesian subversion of the decolonisation process. Making use of archival sources from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and other government agencies, interviews with officials, Parliamentary Hansard, and media reports, this article will examine the motives behind the policy formation. These include Australia’s role in the Western Alliance, its security goals in the Southeast Asian region, Australian support for the Suharto government and commercial motives, such as access to Timor Sea resources. It will also explore the extent to which this Australian lobbying influenced the Indonesian decision to intervene in a situation in which such an outcome was not initially predetermined.
