Suchergebnisse

Between February 2012 and March 2015, the claim that sex selection abortion was taking place in Britain and that action needed to be taken to stop it dominated debate in Britain about abortion. Situating an analysis in sociological and social psychological approaches to the construction of social problems, particularly those considering "feminised" re-framings of anti-abortion arguments, this paper presents an account of this debate. Based on analysis of media coverage, Parliamentary debate and official documents, we focus on claims about grounds (evidence) made to sustain the case that sex selection abortion is a British social problem and highlight how abortion was problematised in new ways. Perhaps most notable, we argue, was the level of largely unchallenged vilification of abortion doctors and providers, on the grounds that they are both law violators and participants in acts of discrimination and violence against women, especially those of Asian heritage. We draw attention to the role of claims made by feminists in the media and in Parliament about "gendercide" as part of this process and argue that those supportive of access to abortion need to critically assess both this aspect of the events and also consider arguments about the problems of "medical power" in the light of what took place.

In many countries, official guidance promotes alcohol abstinence to women during, and also before, pregnancy, on the basis of concern about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Guidance has moved away from reference to a 'choice to drink', claiming absence of evidence about safety of even 'low level' drinking as a justification. Scholarship drawing on sociologies of risk and uncertainty has drawn attention to problems with precautionary thinking in this area of policy making, including for women's autonomy. We build on these insights to assess a more recent type of UK guidance. This is directed not to women advising them to abstain, but instead it is about women, and tasks health professionals with managing the risk pregnant women's behaviour is deemed to present. Using qualitative discourse analysis, we assess one such example, developed in Scotland, called SIGN 156. We contextualise SIGN 156 first through discussion of the relevant literature, making particular use of Ruhl's considerations of the meaning of risk and the social conditioning of choice, and second through an account of developments in UK Government advice in recent years. We show that SIGN 156 builds on a policy context where a precautionary approach is explicit, but we furthermore detail how this approach innovates the guidance and practice field. SIGN 156 expands the meaning of risk and uncertainty and so justifies 'routine' monitoring and screening, generating the case for an expanded form of surveillance of pregnant women. We conclude with a critical commentary on the implications of this case for analyses of risk and uncertainty, and power.

In this article, we follow the approach taken by Riesch and Spiegalhalter in "Careless pork costs lives': Risk stories from science to press release to media' published in this journal, and offer an assessment of one example of a 'risk story'. Using content and thematic qualitative analysis, we consider how the findings of an article 'Fetal Alcohol Exposure and IQ at Age 8: Evidence from a Population-Based Birth-Cohort Study' were framed in the article itself, the associated press release, and the subsequent extensive media coverage. We contextualise this consideration of a risk story by discussing a body of work that critically engages with the development and global proliferation of efforts to advocate for alcohol abstinence to pregnant (and pre-pregnant) women. This work considers the 'democratisation' of risk, a term used to draw attention to the expansion of the definition of the problem of drinking in pregnancy to include any drinking and all women. We show here how this risk story contributed a new dimension to the democratisation of risk through claims that were made about uncertainty and certainty. A central argument we make concerns the contribution of the researchers themselves (not just lobby groups or journalists) to this outcome. We conclude that the democratisation of risk was advanced in this case not simply through journalists exaggerating and misrepresenting research findings, but that communication to the press and the initial interpretation of findings played their part. We suggest that this risk story raises concerns about the accuracy of reporting of research findings, and about the communication of unwarrantedly worrying messages to pregnant women about drinking alcohol.