Objective:

This article proposes a rereading of the novel Blood in the Hands (1959) by Laura Pérez de Oleas Zambrano, to understand, from a historical and gender perspective, the tensions between motherhood and abortion in the exercise of writing.

Methodology:

It analyzes Pérez's novel through feminist literary criticism and the new historicisms. This allows us to understand the novel as a cultural document that registers and, at the same time, transgresses the structures of power.

Originality:

The analysis of this novel broadens the discussion on the history of women in an interdisciplinary dialogue between history and literature that brings forth a complex intellectual reflection on the female condition from motherhood, abortion and writing.

Conclusions:

The article reveals that the tensions between motherhood and abortion that emerged in Ecuador in the first half of the 20th century show the centrality of the female body in contemporary public discourses; that the role of motherhood conditions the experience of citizenship of women and their construction as subjects; and that Pérez's writing exercise is a political act that questions the formation of the female subject.