Review of four books on women of color and reproductive justice: Jennifer Nelson, WOMEN OF COLOR AND THE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS MOVEMENT; Jael Sillimen, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, & Elena R. Gutierrez, UNDIVIDED RIGHTS: WOMEN OF COLOR ORGANIZE FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE; Dorothy Roberts, KILLING THE BLACK BODY: RACE, REPRODUCTION, AND THE MEANING OF LIBERTY.
Review of four books on women of color and reproductive justice: Jennifer Nelson, WOMEN OF COLOR AND THE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS MOVEMENT; Jael Sillimen, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, & Elena R. Gutierrez, UNDIVIDED RIGHTS: WOMEN OF COLOR ORGANIZE FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE; Dorothy Roberts, KILLING THE BLACK BODY: RACE, REPRODUCTION, AND THE MEANING OF LIBERTY.
Review of four books on women of color and reproductive justice: Jennifer Nelson, WOMEN OF COLOR AND THE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS MOVEMENT; Jael Sillimen, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, & Elena R. Gutierrez, UNDIVIDED RIGHTS: WOMEN OF COLOR ORGANIZE FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE; Dorothy Roberts, KILLING THE BLACK BODY: RACE, REPRODUCTION, AND THE MEANING OF LIBERTY.
Black feminism, women of color studies, reproducitve justice, pro choice, Jennifer Nelson, Dorothy Roberts, Jael Sillimen, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, Elena R. Gutierrez
On 28 October 2012, Savita Halappanavar, an Indian woman living in Ireland, died in hospital while under medical care for a miscarrying pregnancy. According to her husband, her repeated requests for an abortion were ignored because of the presence of a foetal heartbeat. Ms Halappanavar's death was a critical event in the process leading to a referendum on 25 May 2018, when the Irish electorate voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, removing the constitutional ban on abortion. The name Savita has become indelibly linked to the changing course of abortion politics, so it is timely to reassess the role of the media in shaping the parameters of the debate about the impact of her death on the issue. This study presents a frame analysis of Irish newspapers in the weeks following her death, mapping the political, medical, legal and socio-ethical discourses, as well as the related contemporaneous events that set the agenda for the type of debate that was to follow. It identifies four media frames: Public Tragedy, Political Opportunity, Abortion Legacy and Maternal Health. Our central argument is that the overall effect of media framing provided much face-saving for politicians in the way that the legislative issue was viewed through a conservative party-political lens, despite public outrage.
Since the early 1990s, post-abortion care (PAC) has been advocated as a harm reduction approach to maternal mortality and morbidity in countries with restrictive abortion laws. PAC indicators demonstrate that the intervention integrates safer uterine aspiration technology such as the Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA) syringe into obstetric practice and facilitates task-shifting from physicians to midwives. In other words, PAC not only saves women's lives, but more generally enhances the organization, quality, and cost-effectiveness of obstetric care. This article draws on my ethnography of Senegal's PAC program, conducted between 2010 and 2011, to illustrate how PAC indicators obscure the professional and technological complexities of treating abortion complications in contexts where abortion is illegal. Data collection methods include observation of PAC services and records at three hospitals; 66 in-depth interviews with health workers, government health officials, and NGO personnel; and a review of national and global PAC data. I show how anxieties about the capacity of the MVA to induce abortion have engendered practices and policies that compromise the quality and availability of care throughout the health system. I explore the multivalent power of MVA statistics in strategically conveying commitments to national and global maternal mortality reduction agendas while eliding profound gaps in access to and quality of care for low-income and rural women. I argue that PAC strategies, technologies, and indicators must be situated within a global framework of reproductive governance, in which safe abortion has been omitted from maternal and reproductive health care associated with reproductive rights. Ethnographic attention to daily obstetric practices challenges globally circulating narratives about PAC as an apolitical intervention, revealing not only how anxieties about abortion ironically suppress the very rates of MVA utilization that purportedly convey PAC quality, but also how they simultaneously give rise to ...
Following Stella Creasy's recent emergency debate on reforming Northern Ireland's strict abortion laws, Fran Amery explains why the intervention is an extremely significant event, not just potentially for Northern Ireland, but for decriminalisation in Britain as well.
This Article will argue that now is the time for the Court to decisively intervene in the abortion controversy by issuing a maximalist Roe-like decision; today's politics do not support an indeterminate standard like Casey's undue burden test. In other words, assuming that there is a constitutional right to abortion, today's Court should assume the heroic role Erwin Chemerinsky embraces in The Case Against the Supreme Court and other writings; specifically, the Court should "protect the rights of minorities who cannot rely on the political process." For Chemerinsky, protecting the rights of minorities is the "primary reason for having a Supreme Court," and is "why the Justices of the Supreme Court. are granted life tenure." In explaining why today's Court should decisively protect abortion rights, this Article will evaluate a common criticism of Roe v. Wade, that the decision unnecessarily perpetuated counterproductive, divisive backlash by seeking to short circuit the political process and mandate an abortion code generally unacceptable to the nation. Left- leaning academics, advocates, and judges have made this criticism- including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Cass Sunstein, Jeff Rosen, Mike Klarman, Gerald Rosenberg, and Bill Eskridge. In earlier writings, I too criticized Roe on these grounds and, correspondingly, celebrated Pennsylvania v. Casey for recalibrating abortion rights in ways that matched prevailing views of popular opinion and elected official preferences. In the pages that follow, I will argue that I and others miscalculated the possible virtues of a rigid decisional rule. In particular, I will explain how party polarization and the related rise of the Tea Party calls into question the benefits of an indeterminate standard in the modern abortion context. And while I will not disavow earlier writings, I will contend that events of the past five years suggest that proponents of the Casey compromise need to recognize that today's political dynamic is far different than the political dynamic in 1973 (when ...
"Performing abortion" typically refers to what health care providers do in clinics, private offices, and (rarely) hospitals 1.21 million times per year,every year, in the United States. At the same time, the phrase indicates what performance artists, choreographers, and activists have been doing on stages, in galleries, and on the streets for decades. Candelario is intrigued by this double meaning that invites us to take seriously what abortion means at this political and historical moment, but also what performance, activism, and the concerted actions of bodies can do. This article offers some introductory thoughts on these intertwined issues, and represents the beginning of a larger project Candelario is conducting. "Performing Abortion: FeministCultural Production after Roe v. Wade" wasconceived with the premise that the examination of performances of and about abortion by feminist artists and activists may reveal productive strategies for reframing the abortion debate in the United States.
AbstractThis paper examines one of the most notorious, yet largely overlooked, provinces in terms of abortion access in Canada: New Brunswick. Through an exploration of the provincial government's activities and litigation in the province, this article traces the history of abortion regulation in New Brunswick, with particular attention paid to the manner in which social movement activism has shaped policy. It argues for the need to reframe abortion as a matter of equal citizenship. Specifically, it suggests that such a rethinking could generate political pressure for recognition and improved services, and stimulate a public discourse that has the potential to begin breaking down the more complex, extra-legal barriers faced by women in Canada.RésuméCet article examine l'une des provinces les plus notoires, mais pourtant grandement négligée, en termes d'accès à l'avortement au Canada, c'est-à-dire le Nouveau-Brunswick. À travers un examen des activités du gouvernement provincial et des litiges dans la province, cet article explore l'histoire de la réglementation de l'avortement au Nouveau-Brunswick, en portant une attention particulière à la façon dont l'activisme du mouvement social a contribué à façonner les politiques. Il fait valoir la nécessité de resituer le contexte de l'avortement comme une question d'égalité des citoyens. Plus spécifiquement, il suggère qu'une nouvelle façon de penser pourrait créer des pressions politiques pour la reconnaissance et l'amélioration des services et stimuler une discussion publique qui pourrait peut-être commencer à éliminer les obstacles plus complexes et extrajudiciaires auxquels les femmes font face au Canada.
Despite the growing body of research on the emotion of disgust – including its relationship to political ideology, moral judgment, matters of sex and sexuality, and death – the global reproductive rights movement has paid relatively little attention to the role disgust plays in the debate over abortion. By focusing on the right of a woman to make her own decision about an unwanted pregnancy, the pro-choice community has allowed anti-choice groups to define and frame the abortion procedure, abortion providers, and women who have abortions in terms associated with disgust. This commentary encourages further examination of what triggers disgust, its measurement, and ways of mitigating it, which could be useful for reducing abortion stigma, in future legal cases and in abortion research, advocacy, and communications.
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.
This essay explores the genre of the mommy memoir for its abortion politics. Buildingon feminist critiques of the genre's reliance on bio-essentialist ideas of motherhood, Iconsider both the potential and limitations within the genre for representing abortionexperiences. In this essay I analyze Irene Vilar's Impossible Motherhood:Testimony of an Abortion Addict (2009) for its rhetorical appropriation of themommy memoir form in order to tell a story of reproductive excess.
One of the most private decisions a woman can make, abortion is also one of the most contentious topics in American civic life. Protested at rallies and politicized in party platforms, terminating pregnancy is often characterized as a selfish decision by women who put their own interests above those of the fetus. This background of stigma and hostility has stifled women's willingness to talk about abortion, which in turn distorts public and political discussion. To pry open the silence surrounding this public issue, Carol Sanger distinguishes between abortion privacy, a form of nondisclosure based on a woman's desire to control personal information, and abortion secrecy, a woman's defense against the many harms of disclosure. Laws regulating abortion patients and providers treat abortion not as an acceptable medical decision – let alone a right – but as something disreputable, immoral, and chosen by mistake. Exploiting the emotional power of fetal imagery, laws require women to undergo ultrasound, a practice welcomed in wanted pregnancies but commandeered for use against women with unwanted pregnancies. Sanger takes these prejudicial views of women's abortion decisions into the twenty-first century by uncovering new connections between abortion law and American culture and politics. New medical technologies, women's increasing willingness to talk online and off, and the prospect of tighter judicial reins on state legislatures are shaking up the practice of abortion. As talk becomes more transparent and acceptable, women's decisions about whether or not to become mothers will be treated more like those of other adults making significant personal choices. ; https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1023/thumbnail.jpg