Unnithan, Maya, de Zordo, Silvia and Dubuc, Sylvie, eds. (2018) Re-situating abortion: bio-politics, global health and rights in neo-liberal times (JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUE). Global Public Health, 13 (6). Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0000000000

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Abstract

1. 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.

2. Reports in the British media over the last 4 years have highlighted the schisms and contestations that have accompanied the reports of gender selective abortions amongst British Asian families. The position that sexselection may be within the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act has particularly sparked controversy amongst abortion campaigners and politicians but equally among medical practitioners (and their professional organisation BPAS) who have hitherto tended to stay clear of such debates. In what ways has the controversy around gender-based abortion led to new framings of the entitlement to service provision and new ways of thinking about evidence in the context of reproductive rights? We reflect on these issues drawing on critiques of what constitutes best evidence, contested notions of reproductive rights and reproductive governance, comparative work in India and China as well as our involvement with different groups of campaigners including British South Asian NGOs. The aim of the paper is to situate the medical and legal provision of abortion services in Britain within current discursive practices around gender equality, ethnicity, reproductive autonomy, probable and plausible evidence, and policies of health reform.

Item Type:	Edited Book
Additional Information:	Composite Special Issue record created for REF2021: Unnithan, Maya and de Zordo, Silvia (2018) [Introduction] Re-situating abortion: bio-politics, global health and rights in neo-liberal times. Global Public Health, 13 (6). pp. 657-661. ISSN 1744-1692 AND Unnithan, Maya and Dubuc, Sylvie (2018) Re-visioning evidence: Reflections on the recent controversy around gender selective abortion in the UK. Global Public Health, 13 (6). pp. 742-753. ISSN 1744-1692
Schools and Departments:	School of Global Studies > Anthropology
Related URLs:	https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2018.14... https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2017.13...
Depositing User:	Jennifer Whitehead
Date Deposited:	12 Jan 2021 15:24
Last Modified:	25 Apr 2023 13:47
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/95838

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