Suchergebnisse

This editorial provides an overview of a thematic series that brings attention to the persistently deficient and unequal access to sexual and reproductive health services for young women in sub-Saharan Africa. It represents an effort to analyze the multifaceted relationship between laws, policies and access to services in Ethiopia, Zambia and Tanzania. Using a comparative perspective and qualitative research methodology, the papers presented in this issue explore legal, political and social factors and circumstances that condition access to sexual and reproductive health services within and across the three countries. Through these examples we show the often inconsistent and even paradoxical relationship between the formal law and practices on the ground. Particular emphasis is placed on safe abortion services as an intensely politicized issue in global sexual and reproductive health. In addition to the presentation of the individual papers, this editorial comments on the global politics of abortion which represents a critical context for the regional and local developments in sexual and reproductive health policy and care provision in general, and for the contentious issue of abortion in particular.

In the twenty years since the collapse of communism in the Eastern Bloc, various scholars of history, women's studies, sociology, political science, and reproductive rights have studied the occurrence of abortion in these formerly communist countries. Although some have sought to question the notion of "abortion culture," most look to these countries as places where abortion was tragically prevalent and accepted. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the assumed knowledge concerning abortion and how this obscures understandings of abortion in formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe. By creating genealogy of "abortion culture," this research seeks to trace the history of how abortion came to be understood as a moral issue, the power behind these understandings, and the resulting consequences. Throughout history, abortion has been understood many different ways until evolving into the understanding that it is negative, it is a moral issue, it is a medical issue, it should be limited, and should only occur rarely. These taken for granted understandings have shaped how abortion in formerly communist countries have been researched and discussed. Beyond academia, these understandings have resulted in a pairing of communism and abortion designed to discredit both.

Thirty-four US states currently require pregnant minors either to notify their parents or get their consent before having a legal abortion. The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of theses statutes provided that minors are also given an alternative mechanism for abortion approval that does not involve parents. The mechanism used is the 'judicial bypass hearing' at which minors persuade judges that they are mature and informed enough to make the abortion decision themselves. While most minors receive judicial approval, the hearings intrude into the most personal aspects of a young woman's life. The hearings, while formally civil in nature, can be punitive in tone. Parental involvement statutes are often couched in the language of family communications and protecting minors. They are politically popular because they offer politicians the chance to be pro-life, pro-choice, and pro-family all at once. This paper argues that parental involvement statutes are less concerned with developing nuanced policies to improve the quality of teenage health or decision making than with securing a set of political goals aimed at making abortion harder to get, restoring parental authority, and punishing girls for having sex.

Women's sexual and reproductive rights are politicized worldwide, with the most contentious right being the right to safe, legal abortion. In Latin America, where one stands on the issue of abortion has become a central identity marker; a salient issue in electoral mobilization, and a matter of coalition building and high politics. As a consequence, legalized contestation over abortion is raging across Latin America, and indeed much of the world. This article conceptualizes this as "abortion lawfare" and develops a framework for analyzing the complex dynamics and long-term, multisited strategies at play in the wars over abortion. The concept of lawfare – despite and, to some extent, because of its ideological uses and connotations – serves as a useful heuristic tool for grasping these dynamics, and the lawfare typology brings out the different facets of the phenomenon in terms of actors, strategies, and arenas and provides the basis for analyzing how, in any given context, actors face multiple and shifting opportunity structures. This, in turn, influences the strategies they pursue and what is achieved. ; Os direitos reprodutivos e sexuais das mulheres são politizados ao redor do mundo, e o direito ao aborto legal e seguro é o mais controverso. Na América Latina, o lugar que certa pessoa ocupa no debate sobre aborto se tornou um marcador central de identidade, uma questão importante na mobilização eleitoral e um elemento de construção de coalizões e de política. Como consequência, a contestação jurídica sobre aborto está ocorrendo em toda a América Latina e, na verdade, em grande parte do mundo. Este artigo conceitua isso como "abortion lawfare" e desenvolve uma abordagem para analisar a dinâmica complexa e as estratégias multilocalizadas de longo prazo em jogo nas guerras pelo aborto. O conceito de lawfare – apesar de e, em certa medida, por causa de seus usos e conotações ideológicas – serve como ferramenta heurística útil para compreender essas dinâmicas, e a tipologia de lawfare traz à tona as diferentes facetas do fenômeno em termos de atores, estratégias e arenas, além de fornecer a base para analisar como, em qualquer contexto, os atores enfrentam estruturas de oportunidades múltiplas e dinâmicas. Isso, por sua vez, influencia as estratégias que eles perseguem e os resultados que alcançam.

New modes of neoliberal and rights-based reproductive governance are emerging across the world which either paradoxically foreclose access to universal health services or promote legislative reform without providing a continuum of services on the ground. These shifts present new opportunities for the expansion but also the limitation of abortion provision conceptually and 'on-the-ground', both in the Global North and South. The collection of papers in this special issue examine current abortion governance discourse and practice in historical, socio-political contexts to analyse the threat posed to women's sexual and reproductive health and rights globally. Focusing on abortion politics in the context of key intersectional themes of morality, law, religion and technology, the papers conceptually 're-situate' the analysis of abortion with reference to a changing global landscape where new modes of consumption, rapid flows of knowledge and information, increasingly routinised recourse to reproductive technologies and related forms of bio-sociality and solidarity amongst recipients and practitioners coalesce.

To examine the veracity of the political and legal claims of a feminist history against abortion, this Article focuses on one of the leading icons used in antiabortion advocacy—Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton has, quite literally, been the poster child for FFL's historical campaign against abortion, appearing on posters, flyers, and commemorative coffee mugs. Advocates claim that Stanton is a particularly fitting spokesperson because she was a "feisty gal who had seven children and was outspokenly pro-life." They claim that she "condemned abortion in the strongest possible terms" and was "a revolutionary who consistently advocated for the rights of women, for women's education, for the celebration and acceptance of motherhood—and for the protection of children, born and unborn." FFL represented to the Supreme Court that "Elizabeth Cady Stanton clearly argued that the liberation of women was needed to stop the killing of children before and after birth" and that she expressed "an uncompromising view that abortion is 'child-murder.'" To refute the "feminist case against abortion" as attributed to Stanton, this Article proceeds in five parts. Like other works of legal history, this Article is fundamentally concerned with recovering all of the legally relevant facts and placing those facts in appropriate historical and legal context. Part II first details the parameters of the political narrative of antiabortion feminists, focusing on the group Feminists for Life, which orchestrated this historical strategy. Part III then situates Stanton's remarks and views within the appropriate historical context by tracing the development of the nineteenth-century campaign to criminalize abortion. The male propaganda of a physicians' campaign bolstered by sensationalist journalism attacked the common law acceptability of abortion before quickening and employed antifeminist rhetoric about the proper place of women in society. While a few female voices joined the debate to defend women against moral attacks and place the blame for ...

In her Introduction to the inaugural issue of the Columbia Journal of and Law (JGL), Ruth Bader Ginsburg traced the gendered history of Columbia Law School from 1928, when the first female student was admitted, to 1990, when women composed nearly half the student body. Reflecting on this change, she asked, "Does women's participation affect the way law business is conducted, and the shape and direction of legal development?" In pursuing this "large question," Justice Ginsburg contemplated a feminist movement that would offer "a spacious home" for "all who have the imagination and determination to work for the full realization of human potential."

We examine regulations in thirteen Southern states regarding access to legal abortion, procedures for juveniles and minors seeking birth control or abortions, clinic regulations, and the dynamics of public funding of birth control and abortion. Southern state legislatures play an important strategic role in national anti-legal abortion politics. We analyze the paradox of the Southern population utilizing legal abortion and birth control at comparable levels to other regions of the country, while Southern legislatures consistently restrict access to these options. Our paper integrates gender, social class, race, and sexuality into our analysis of this aspect of Southern and national politics.

Introduction: Sub-Saharan Africa has one of the world's highest rates of unsafe abortions, and most maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion arises from this region. Abortion is restricted by law in most of these countries. The aim of the thesis is to address the impact of restrictive abortion laws on the incidence, morbidity and mortality from unsafe abortion in Sub-Saharan African countries. Material and methods: A systematic literature search was performed in April 2017 for studies published between January 2000 and April 2017. The studies were selected based on the following inclusions-criteria; incidence and complications of induced abortions, maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion, and abortion laws in Sub-Saharan Africa. Selected studies were then assessed for their relevance to the thesis and for scientific quality. Results: 37 studies were found eligible, and included in the final list. Many countries in Sub- Saharan Africa have liberalized their abortion laws the past decade, and there is a political trend towards a liberal law change in the region. Estimates of induced abortion showed that a substantial proportion of women are still having unsafe abortions in Sub-Saharan African countries, and that the rates varied between rural and urban regions, with the highest estimates in the urban regions. Sepsis was the most reported complication after unsafe abortion, and contributed to the high estimated proportion of maternal deaths in this region. Unsafe abortion affects adolescents more than any other pregnancy-related complication. Estimating unsafe abortion incidence, morbidity and mortality is challenging in a restrictive law setting. Conclusions: Restrictive abortion laws will not lower the incidence of abortion. High rates of complications and mortality arises from Sub-Saharan African countries in a restrictive law setting, in addition to high levels of induced unsafe abortions. Liberalizing abortion laws is not sufficient alone. Access to high-quality health facilities and trained health personal are equally important measures towards lowering morbidity and mortality following unsafe abortion.

The Politics of Reproduction: Adoption, Abortion and Surrogacy in the Age of Neoliberalism uniquely brings together three sites of reproduction and reproductive politics to demonstrate their entanglement in creating or restricting options for family-making. The original essays in this collection—which draw from a wide range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives—are attentive to neoliberalism's reshaping of economies and intimacies to better understand the politics of reproduction. By looking at particular instances (surrogacy in Mexico, forced sterilization in Peru, and racialized biopolitics in post-Katrina Mississippi, among other sites), The Politics of Reproduction focuses on the effects of a radically altered economic landscape on individual choice-making. As a whole, the volume critically engages the question of choice to better understand the costs of a political and ideological climate that encourages, even demands, individual solutions to intractable social problems.

In 2018, Irish citizens voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution to allow for the introduction of a more liberal abortion law. In this article, I develop a retrospective reading of the stubborn persistence of the denial of reproductive rights to women in Ireland over the decades. I argue that the ban's severity and longevity is rooted in deep-seated, affective attachments that formed part of processes of postcolonial nation-building and relied on shame and the construction of the Irish nation as a particular, gendered place. The article develops the notion of 'gendered displacement' to conceptualise abortion travel in the context of the history of women's coercive confinement, and provides an affective, feminist reading of the interlinkages between place and nationhood. It also draws on three cases—the X, Y and Z cases—to illustrate the centrality of place and women's occupation of space to the analysis of Ireland's abortion ban, which should be read in the wider context of the legacy of what I term the 'affective politics of place'.

This article examines Soviet reproductive politics after the Communist regime legalized abortion in 1955. The regime's new abortion policy did not result in an end to the condemnation of abortion in official discourse. The government instead launched an extensive campaign against abortion. Why did authorities bother legalizing the procedure if they still disapproved of it so strongly? Using archival sources, public health materials, and medical as well as popular journals to investigate the antiabortion campaign, this article argues that the Soviet government sought to regulate gender and sexuality through medical intervention and health "education" rather than prohibition and force in the post-Stalin era. It also explores how the antiabortion public health campaign produced "knowledge" not only about the procedure and its effects, but also about gender and sexuality, subjecting both women and men to new pressures and regulatory norms.

Many authors have argued that sex-selective abortion (SSA) poses a problem for defenders of reproductive choice: the notion that a woman has "freely chosen" to abort a female fetus becomes problematic when she faces compelling pressure to bear a male child. This argument reflects the broader concern of the reproductive justice movement that mainstream pro-choice discourse has defined "choice" in narrow, legalistic terms, and overlooks the barriers to reproductive choice often faced by poor women and women of color. This article examines recent debates surrounding a proposed ban on SSA in the United Kingdom. It finds that despite attempts by the ban's proponents to make intersectional claims around gender, ethnicity, and class, their arguments also invoke xenophobia by constructing Indian migrants as a threat to "British" values of gender equality. Thus, the article suggests that the concept of disarticulation may fruitfully be used to make sense of such "intersectional" claims.

A substantial amount of literature dealing with conceptualisations of the nation has neglected the importance that gender and the politics of reproduction play in the construction of national identities. Analysing images of political campaigns and activists as well as public discourses on motherhood, abortion and childcare, I will illustrate the importance that gender and sexuality assumed in German nation-building projects before and after its unification in 1990. After 1949, East and West German ideas of nationhood were premised on opposing ideas of gender roles, in that politicians within these two German nations mobilised distinct gender identities to assert their respective political system as superior and progressive. While in East Germany, the progressiveness of the socialist project was measured along the lines of women's integration into the labour force; in West Germany, the idea that a woman's identity was primarily rooted in motherhood played an influential role in nationalist discourses. Once East and West Germany reunified in 1990, these opposing ideas of gender roles clashed. This became particularly visible in the context of political debates around abortion and childcare. An analysis of these debates suggests that the "new" unified German nation was premised upon a story in which the West German idea of the housewife-breadwinner model prevailed. This was diametrically opposed to what was framed as the East German "woman-worker" who had free access to abortion, and was abjected as immoral and backward. Analysing how such a national story was constructed is highly valuable, as it elucidates the ways in which gender has become a constitutive and structural element in the nation-building process of unified Germany to the present day.

This paper discusses the extremely complex and important topic and dilemma of abortion. Specifically, that the pro-life versus pro-choice dilemma is an imperative one that continues to cause ethical tensions in the United States. For this reason, this issue and dilemma warrants close scrutiny. It affects many major areas including ethics, religion, politics, law, and medicine. Ethical theories and principles of the pro-life position and the pro-choice position will be contrasted. This paper will further discuss the arguments in the context of Roe v. Wade and its impact on laws in the United States. The general ethics of the pro-life argument and the pro-choice argument are founded on the issues of human rights and freedom. Three main principles that the pro-life argument argues (the Human Rights Principle, the Mens Rea Principle, and the Harm Principle) will also be discussed. This account will not include this author's own prescriptive response (in the form of recommendations, best practices, or similar types of judgments) and therefore, this paper does not go beyond a purely comparative method. Lastly, the Nuremberg Code, which was created at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial, will be discussed. Specifically, the Nuremberg Code will be correlated in relation to laws in the United States, as well as contemporary bioethical debates, which are misleading when comparing the use of fetal tissue for transplants from abortions to experiments done during the Holocaust and crimes of Nazi biomedical science.