Abortion Rights, Reproductive Justice and the State: International Perspectives

This book looks at the trajectories of reproduction and abortion rights in diverse socio-cultural contexts in various countries, and the regional concerns which animate these discourses.

Abortion as practice and rhetoric has historically drawn attention to the reproductive body in the public sphere. This book traces the continuities and discontinuities in the debates around abortion rights, and its relationship with the State, in different countries - US, Korea, China, Poland, Argentina, Ireland, India, Bangladesh, South Africa, and New Zealand. It presents a comparative analysis that is grounded thematically around issues of race, class, technology, politics, and law, through interactions with institutionalized religion and the state. Central to this endeavour is an understanding of feminist mobilization on issues of abortion rights, in different cultural-historical contexts and its implications for the articulation of reproductive justice. For instance, it looks at the specific and diverse ways in which religion and culture intersect with state practice and national identities; the emergence of social action, activism and mobilization; the international politics of population control; and the place of reproductive justice and feminist resistance in processes of democratization.

Lucid and topical, this book will be of interest to students and researchers of gender studies, sociology, political science, human rights, policy around reproductive and women’s rights, law, and reproductive justice.

Keertana Kannabiran Tella is a graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India with a specialisation in Development Studies. Her interests lie at the intersection of medical anthropology, law, human rights, international relations, gender, and feminism.