Dilemmas of the Will: Uncertainty, Reproduction, and the Rhetoric of Control
In: Signs: journal of women in culture and society, Volume 27, Issue 3, p. 641-663
ISSN: 1545-6943
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In: Signs: journal of women in culture and society, Volume 27, Issue 3, p. 641-663
ISSN: 1545-6943
In: Feminist review, Volume 66, Issue 1, p. 4-24
ISSN: 1466-4380
This article examines the precepts of natural law feminism, and in exploring the writings of two Canadian feminists, Maureen McTeer and Louise Vandelac, examines how natural law feminism is deployed in debates about how to theorize reproduction. I contend that the natural law perspective obscures many issues worthy of feminist inquiry, and, perhaps more critically, eschews a discourse that emphasizes reproductive freedom in favour of one which has at its centre a largely unproblematized view of reproduction that follows a biologically driven script of conception, gestation, childbirth and mothering as inherently and necessarily connected. I argue that this stance is particularly evident in natural law feminist analyses of ecology and the regulation of new reproductive and genetic technologies. In both these areas, natural law feminism poses the central problem as one in which feminists must zealously protect the natural association between women and reproduction; in so doing, natural law feminists gloss over the nature of this association. I suggest a reframing of the focus of debates on reproduction from what is natural and what is socially constructed to how we demarcate the two.
In: Economy and society, Volume 28, Issue 1, p. 95-117
ISSN: 1469-5766
In: Signs: journal of women in culture and society, Volume 27, Issue 3, p. 933-938
ISSN: 1545-6943