My Body My Right : From Feminist Perspective On Abortion (original) (raw)
Related papers
2021
In feminist philosophy, there is a silent but consistent recurrence of criticisms regarding the mainstream, “liberal” defense of the right to abortion, most prominently exemplified by Judith Jarvis Thomson’s seminal paper “A Defense of Abortion”. In this paper, I explore the feminist proposals of Alison M. Jaggar (1975) and Sally Markowitz (1990) and examine, in light of these, the prospects of a particularly feminist ethics of abortion. I argue that although feminist theorists are right to say that defenses based on bodily autonomy set the wrong agenda for public discourse, thus contributing to a misleading and uninformed debate, Thomsonian arguments still have considerable advantages, both in philosophy and in the public discourse. In particular, while Thomsonian accounts can successfully sidestep the conflict between the mother’s and the fetus’s rights, currently available feminist proposals can meaningfully transform but cannot eliminate this problem.
Analysing the abortion rights debate as a question of ‘body theory’
Junctions: Graduate Journal of the Humanities, 2017
Reproductive freedom or the 'right to choose' was one of the linchpins of second-wave feminism in Europe and in the USA, in the second half of the twentieth century. However, more than forty years after the passing of Roe v. Wade 1 , abortion remains illegal in a number of European countries, while rollbacks on reproductive rights are threatened by the new political administration in the United States. The abortion issue has long been posited as a feminist struggle against male ownership of women's 2 bodies and against sexual and religious conservatism. In this article, I take an alternative viewpoint, analysing the abortion debate as a question of body theory. Using empirical data from the Irish abortion rights debate, I analyse how the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice movements in Ireland construct and represent pregnant embodiment in differential ways, asking whether these diverse conceptualisations variously underpin (anti-) abortion ideologies. I argue that engaging with the abortion rights debate within the framework of body theory provides useful analytical tools for deconstructing current discourse, whilst also making space for the articulation of new perspectives from the point of view of the embodied pregnant subject.
The Problem of Abortion: Essentially Contested Concepts and Moral Autonomy
Bioethics, 2004
When one thinks about the ethics of abortion, one inevitably thinks about rights, since it is in terms of the concept of rights that much of the debate has been conducted. This is true of overtly feminist as well as non-feminist accounts. Indeed, some early feminist writers – Judith Jarvis Thomson and Mary Ann Warren, for example – employ a model of rights that is indistinguishable, or virtually indistinguishable, from that of their non-feminist counterparts. However, more recent feminist writers have developed a different understanding of ‘a woman's right to choose.’ In this paper, I will begin by outlining the non-feminist debate over the moral permissibility of abortion. I will suggest that this debate is irresolvable, since at its heart is an ‘essentially contested concept’, that of personhood. I will then consider the way in which some feminist writers have attempted to reconceive the terms of the abortion debate and suggest an expanded account of women's right to abortion, drawing on the work of Susan Sherwin. Finally, I will argue that there is a further element to a ‘woman's right to choose’ that expands on and provides a conceptual link between the feminist and non-feminist understanding of abortion.
Body (Subject) Interruptus: A Phenomenology of Unwanted Pregnancy
Presented to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Saint Thomas University and the University of New Brunswick (Fredricton, Canada), May 30 – June 4, 2011
In Jane Martin's Pulitzer Prize-nominated play Keely and Du, Keely, a young working class woman intending to terminate her pregnancy, is abducted by a group of religious fundamentalists, who spirit her away to an undisclosed location where she is held prisoner.
My body, not my choice: Against legalised abortion (The Journal of Medical Ethics, forthcoming)
There are some cases in which the government should coerce its citizens into providing care to vulnerable persons. For example, suppose that a woman and her infant are snowed in a cabin, and that the only available food for the infant is her mother's breastmilk. The government should coerce the mother into breastfeeding her infant. This fact, however, has significant implications: first, it shows that David Boonin's recent argument for legalised abortion fails. And second, it shows that (given fetal personhood) abortion should be illegal.
Fetal Rights versus the Female Body: Contested Domains
Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1996
This article examines the debates surrounding the personhood of the fetus in relationship to the mother as these issues were socially constructed in the Mississippi state legislature in 1990 and 1991. In examining the patriarchal assumptions that underlay the proposed Mississippi legislation, the article also addresses the legal ramifications of defining the fetus as a person whose rights are posited as equal to, or greater than, those of the pregnant woman. By relying on medical/scientific definitions of personhood, the groundwork for further refinement and monitoring of women and fetuses is being established, such that what it means to be human is increasingly defined in essentialist terms. In the final evaluation, focusing on conception as the moment in which an “unborn child” is created sets the stage for the ultimate essentialist metaphor: a eugenic definition of personhood.
Rethinking the Abortion Issue: The Problem of Normative Femininity and Hermeneutical Injustice
Emergent Australasian Philosophers , 2011
To date the wealth of literature on abortion has been dedicated to resolving the question of its legal and moral permissibility in relation to the fetus and pregnant woman as subjects of moral standing. This has created a dichotomised way of talking about abortion chiefly in terms of conflicting rights; as a 'wrongful' versus 'legitimate' form of killing. The tension between this individualistic rights-based discourse and the 'ethic of care' to which women are often expected to conform in their moral deliberations gives rise to a stigmatising picture of a woman who aborts as 'callous' or 'selfish.' Males who share in abortion decisions are rarely subject to the same type of criticism. In this paper I conceptualise the impact of normative femininity and social judgement on women's capacity for moral self-determination in abortion contexts within the framework of an injustice. I do so by examining women's discursive participation with respect to abortion, and by analysing the impact that abortion stigma has on women's moral agency and lived experience. This will enable me to demonstrate how women may be uniquely subject to a hermeneutical injustice, which in abortion contexts gives way to a phenomenological injustice.
2019
This research paper examines the intersections between the female body, as a contested site, and the abortion debate. It relates the morality of the foetus to the woman’s freedom of choice, and investigates the different perspectives towards the abortion debate. It also sheds light on the reasons behind putting limitations on abortion, and the impact of these restrictions on women’s health and reproductive practices. This paper simply does not re-write what has already been said about abortion, but it takes another dimension in analysing what makes people eager to save life, and what makes them pay less attention to the freedom of choice. The results have revealed that there is a kind of equilibrium when it comes to people’s attitudes towards the legalization of abortion, as they see that abortion is full of exceptions. Poverty, rape, fetal deformity, unplanned pregnancy, etc. are exceptional reasons that can be used to justify or deny the resort to abortion. Though it is a risky choice, clandestine abortion, on the other hand, has been proven the resort to most women living in poor conditions and who are victims of society’s norms and restrictive legislations.
Phenomenology of pregnancy and the ethics of abortion
Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy, 2018
In this article I investigate the ways in which phenomenology could guide our views on the rights and/or wrongs of abortion. To my knowledge very few phenomenologists have directed their attention toward this issue, although quite a few have strived to better understand and articulate the strongly related themes of pregnancy and birth, most often in the context of feminist philosophy. After introducing the ethical and political contemporary debate concerning abortion, I introduce phenomenology in the context of medicine and the way phenomenologists have understood the human body to be lived and experienced by its owner. I then turn to the issue of pregnancy and discuss how the embryo or foetus could appear for us, particularly from the perspective of the pregnant woman, and what such showing up may mean from an ethical perspective. The way medical technology has changed the experience of pregnancy – for the pregnant woman as well as for the father and/or other close ones – is discussed, particularly the implementation of early obstetric ultra-sound screening and blood tests (NIPT) for Down’s syndrome and other medical defects. I conclude the article by suggesting that phenomenology can help us to negotiate an upper time limit for legal abortion and, also, provide ways to determine what embryo-foetus defects to look for and in which cases these should be looked upon as good reasons for performing an abortion. Keywords: ethics of abortion; phenomenology; lived body; pregnancy; obstetric ultrasound; quickening; NIPT