Suchergebnisse

Reveals that interest group activity has had marginal impact on policy output; Sweden, Ireland, US, and Israel.

Research Highlights and Abstract This article Explains how a historical account may be usefully combined with an analysis of the constitutive representation of gender in order to provide insights into the substantive representation of women; Provides an empirical account of how MPs favouring restrictions on legal abortion have historically constructed women as victims of unethical doctors in order to undermine the foundations of the 1967 Abortion Act; Helps explain recent attempts to strip abortion providers of the ability to provide counselling; Demonstrates that when set against the medicalised regulatory regime established by the 1967 Act, the contributions of pro-choice MPs may be criticised as problematic attempts to reconcile a feminist abortion politics with the status quo. In 2011, Parliament debated an amendment to the government's Health and Social Care Bill which would have mandated that abortion counselling be provided by independent organisations. While many attacked the amendment as anti-feminist, its principal sponsor, Nadine Dorries, claimed to be acting on behalf of women. This article argues that a historical approach may be fruitfully utilised in order to make sense of such conflicting 'feminist' claims. Through analysis of parliamentary debates, it demonstrates that when historical and discursive context is taken into account, the Dorries amendment can be viewed as part of a broader attack on the foundations of the 1967 Abortion Act. This historical approach also allows the contributions of pro-choice women representatives to be criticised as problematic attempts to reconcile a feminist abortion politics with the status quo.

AbstractAfter a 35‐year‐long constitutional ban on abortion, the Eighth Amendment was repealed in May 2018 and the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 was introduced in the Republic of Ireland. Although "Repeal" and the legalization of abortion marked a significant transformation in reproductive governance, many aspects of the new abortion policy continue to complicate abortion care access and provision. In this article, I explore the mobilizations of health and rights in political discourses on abortion after legalization. In doing so, I identify how moral governance operates in post‐Repeal abortion politics. I critically consider restrictive strategies in abortion politics in Ireland and compare these to a number of recent key anti‐abortion tactics in the United States. As such, I situate post‐Repeal and post‐Roe abortion debates within parallel temporalities of abortion governance and highlight the adaptability of discourses on health and rights in shifting legal contexts.