Reimagining Global Abortion Politics

What are the contemporary issues in abortion politics globally? What factors explain variations in access to abortion between and within different countries? This text provides a transnationally-focused, interdisciplinary analysis of trends in abortion politics using case studies from around the Global North and South. It considers how societal influences, such as religion, nationalism and culture, impact abortion law and access. It explores the impact of international human rights norms, the increasing displacement of people due to conflict and crisis and the role of activists on law reform and access. The book concludes by considering the future of abortion politics through the more holistic lens of reproductive justice. Utilising a unique interdisciplinary approach, this book provides a major contribution to the knowledge base on abortion politics globally. It provides an accessible, informative and engaging text for academics, policy makers and readers interested in abortion politics.

This book considers how societal influences, such as religion, nationalism and culture, impact abortion law and access. It provides an accessible, informative and engaging text for academics, policy makers and readers interested in abortion politics.

Contributors: Barbara Baird, Niklas Barke, Anna Bogic, Hayley Brown, Lori A. Brown, Cathrine Chambers, Ewelina Ciaputa, Gayle Davis, Mary Gilmartin, Agata Ignaciuk, Sinéad Kennedy, Lena Lennerhed, Jo-Ann MacDonald, Colleen MacQuarrie, Jane O'Neill, Clare Parker, Christabelle Sethna, Sally Sheldon

Examining the changing pluralities of contemporary abortion debate in Britain, this innovative and important book shows why it is necessary to move beyond an understanding of abortion politics as characterised in binary terms by ‘pro-choice’ versus ‘pro-life’. Amery traces the evolution of political and parliamentary discourses from the passage of the Abortion Act in the 1960s to the present day, and argues that the current provision of abortion in Britain rests on assumptions about medical authority over women’s reproductive decision-making which are unsustainable. She explores new arguments around sex-selective abortion, disability rights, pre-abortion counselling and the push for decriminalization, and radically reconceptualizes the debate to account for these new battlegrounds in abortion politics.

Available Open Access under CC-BY licence. Irish law currently permits abortion only where the life of the pregnant woman is at risk. Since 1983, the 8th Amendment to the Constitution has recognised the “unborn” as having a right to life equal to that of the “mother”. Consequently, most people in Ireland who wish to bring their pregnancies to an end either import the abortion pill illegally, travel abroad to access abortion, or continue with the pregnancy against their will. Now, however, there are signs of change. A constitutional referendum will be held in 2018, after which it will be possible to reimagine, redesign, and reform the law on abortion. Written by experts in the field, this book draws on experience from other countries, as well as experiences of maternal medical care in Ireland, to call for a feminist, woman-centered, and rights-based radical new approach to abortion law in Ireland. Directly challenging grounds-based abortion law, this accessible guide brings together feminist analysis, comparative research, human rights law, and political awareness to propose a new constitutional and legislative settlement on reproductive autonomy in Ireland. It offers practical proposals for policymakers and advocates, including model legislation, making it an essential campaigning tool leading up to the referendum.

Addressing the implications of current British public health policies on the equal delivery of health services, this book--part of the Evidence for Public Health Practice series--explicitly identifies inequalities in health service practices. It offers an applied approach to researching, understanding, and dealing with this issue. Drawing on complexity theory, the authors use case studies to illustrate the problems, to discuss them in real-life terms, and to illuminate their complexities for students and practitioners of public health, health promotion, and health policy.

Representing Abortion analyses how artists, writers, performers, and activists make abortion visible, audible, and palpable within contexts dominated by anti-abortion imagery centred on the fetus and the erasure of the pregnant person, challenging the polarisation of conversations about abortion. This book illuminates the manifold ways that abortion is depicted and narrated by artists, performers, clinicians, writers, and activists. This representational work offers nuanced and complex understandings of abortion, personally and politically. Analyses of such representations are urgently needed as access to abortion is diminished and anti-abortion representations of the fetus continue to dominate the cultural horizon for thinking about abortion. Expanding the frame of reference for understanding abortion beyond the anti-abortion use of the fetal image, contributors to this collection push beyond narrow abstractions to examine representations of the experience and procedure of abortion within grounded histories, politics, and social contexts. The collection is organized into sections around seeing (and not seeing) abortion; fetal materiality; abortion storytelling and memoir; and representations for new arguments. These themes cover a range of topics including abortion visibility, anti-abortion discourse, pro-choice engagements with the fetus, personal experience and media representations. The analyses of such representations counteract anti-abortion rhetoric, carving out space for new arguments for abortion that are more representative and inclusive and asking audiences to envision new ways to advocate for safe abortion access through reproductive justice frameworks. This is an innovative and challenging collection that will be of key interest for scholars studying reproductive rights and reproductive justice, as well as women and gender studies. Representing Abortion is organized to structure upper year undergraduate and graduate courses on reproductive rights and reproductive justice in a new and engaging way.

In this book, motherhood and reproduction are identified as sites of legal, political, and ideological surveillance, regulation, and criminalization. Collectively, this rich and diverse edited volume builds on cross-disciplinary frameworks and an attention to differences among mothers to analyze multiple ways that mothers and pregnant women face culture, policy, or practices that may criminalize their identities or their actions. Several themes cross the volumes’ six chapters, from the importance of and problems related to socialized expectations of what “good mothers” should do – for incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and never incarcerated mothers alike – to the role of state actors and everyday informal interactions in enforcing these expectations, particularly against marginalized, Black, Brown and young mothers in open-air prisons. Conflicts between motherhood ideologies and state control dominate many women under carceral motherhood. Nation-states are also implicated in these analyses, particularly in the European Union, where nation-states outsource abortion across and within geopolitical borders, making migration a contested strategy for pregnant women. Yet despite the criminalizing of motherhood and reproduction described in the text, women and mothers are also found to be resilient, choosing their identities and their actions. Criminalizing Motherhood and Reproduction will be a key resource for researchers, scholars and practitioners in the fields of feminist criminology and motherhood studies, criminology and criminal justice, women’s studies, gender studies, child and youth studies and sociology. It was originally published as a special issue of Women & Criminal Justice.