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Feminism and Abortion Politics: Choice, Rights, and Reproductive Freedom

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Feminism and Abortion Politics: Choice, Rights, and Reproductive Freedom Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 335 – 345, 2002 Copyright D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/02/$ – see front matter PII S0277-5395(02)00256-X FEMINISM AND ABORTION POLITICS: CHOICE, RIGHTS, AND REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM Lisa Smyth School of Social Sciences and International Development, University of Wales Swansea, Keir Hardie Building, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK Synopsis — This paper examines the problems associated with feminist articulations of rights claims and other alternatives for advocating reproductive freedom. Criticisms of private choice advocacy in particular, and rights advocacy in general, are considered, along with proposals either to abandon rights claims in favour of care theory on the one hand, or advocate gendered citizenship on the other. Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser and Drucilla Cornell, the author argues that the category of the rights-bearing citizen should not be thought to be necessarily masculinized, in virtue of the assumption of ‘‘indivisibility,’’ and that making rights claims does not necessarily entail reproducing a gendered public/private dichotomy. Thus, this paper contends that rights theory offers a worthwhile platform for feminist advocacy of reproductive freedom. D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION PROBLEMS WITH ‘‘A RIGHT TO CHOOSE’’ How can feminism best advocate abortion access? Feminist politics faces complex questions over what direction abortion advocacy should take, particularly Whose Choice? over the efficacy of framing such advocacy in terms Feminist arguments in support of abortion rights of rights. This paper will consider some problems have necessarily engaged with broader debates over with feminist articulations of rights claims and other how to produce rights claims which minimise the risk alternatives for advocating reproductive freedom. of application or interpretation in unjust and unequal Two apparent problems with pro-choice discourse ways. This has, in turn, led to debates over whether will be outlined initially: the limitations of private rights claims can ever be a sufficient remedy for choice claims, particularly in the light of how they inequality and injustice. The strategy of defending have been applied in the US context; and the emer- abortion access as ‘‘a woman’s right to choose’’ has gence of competing claims for recognition of foetal come under pressure from two directions. Firstly, the rights. I will then consider feminist attempts to deal particular articulation of the demand has facilitated with this history by reformulating claims for abortion racist and eugenic policies concerned with population access in other than rights terms, before considering a control, particularly in the US context.1 The major number of attempts to devise a politics of reproduc- problem which has facilitated this form of appropria- tive freedom by employing rights theory. tion lies with the meaning of the term ‘‘choice,’’ generally defined, both culturally and legally, as an aggregation of ideas of privacy and autonomy. The implicit meaning informing the use of the concept can be found even in feminist criticisms of its political I would like to thank the University of Warwick for financial value. For example, Petchesky (1986), in her influ- support in undertaking the research on which this paper is ential consideration of its limits, defines choice as ‘‘a based. Also thanks to Deborah Lynn Steinberg, Cillian woman’s right to control her own body,’’ a version of McBride, Louise Ryan, and the anonymous referees for bodily and decisional autonomy, while also arguing discussion and helpful comments. that such autonomy should be limited, because, as she 335 336 Lisa Smyth puts it, recognizing women as the source of decision tic sphere, but rather as the imaginary sphere of making over pregnancy ‘‘lets men and society neatly personal identity and self-realization.6 Nancy Fraser off the hook’’ (Petchesky, 1986, p. 7). Specifically, (1997, p. 115) has argued that the feminist project is the complex contexts of abortion decisions is left aimed not at the collapse of the boundaries between unexamined in making a claim for abortion access as public and private, but rather ‘‘to overcome the an issue of ‘‘private’’ choice (Davis, 1981; Himmel- gender hierarchy that gives men more power than weit, 1988). In other words, the emphasis on privacy women to draw the line between public and private,’’ prevents any consideration of the socio-political while also taking account of other dimensions to that forces which produce both involuntary pregnancies power imbalance, not least those of race, ethnicity, and calls for abortion access, and constrain the and class. Kandiyoti (1991, p. 430) emphasizes the ‘‘choices’’ of different women in different contexts. major difference between privacy and patriarchy, This construction of abortion as an issue of private arguing that feminists should be wary of ethnocentric choice trivializes abortion decisions, as well as definitions of the private and the public, and should endorsing the very mind/body dualism which femi- acknowledge that the ‘‘private’’ is often problemati- nism has consistently contested (Cornell, 1995, cally defined by the state. p. 33).2 The second problem with claiming abortion as a The problems associated with this narrow inter- privacy right, however, is that this construction does pretation of what is at stake in abortion politics can be not oblige the state to ensure access to abortion seen, for example, in Lucinda Cisler’s (1969) argu- services (Petchesky, 1986). Treating abortion as a ment that access to birth control is essential to right to privacy is therefore insufficient to prevent the women’s liberation. She explained the very high rates state from actively obstructing access (Cornell, 1995, of sterilization among Puerto Rican women in New p. 33).7 If the private sphere were officially defined York city as a pragmatic response by those women, not in the usual terms of possessive individualism, precisely through the exercise of private choice, both but in terms of personal identity and self-realization, to Catholic regulation of sexual morality, and to the then perhaps the state would be obliged to support difficulty of practicing birth control legally in Puerto abortion access (a point which will be considered in Rico.3 In other words, the very high rates of steri- section three, on Feminist Rights Theory, below). To lization among Puerto Rican women, she assumed, borrow Nancy Fraser’s (1997) analytic model, the was due to a form of private female resistance to claim that abortion should be considered an issue of enforced motherhood, rather than as the result of private choice, in contexts where privacy is defined specifically racist official policy.4 Thus, she failed either in familial, domestic terms, or in terms of to take into account classed and raced constructions possessive individualism, can be characterized as an of gender, sexuality, and nationhood. She conse- ‘‘affirmative recognition’’ strategy, which, in this quently offered a mistaken account of abortion prac- context, ultimately endorses essentialist constructions tices, in terms that would not address the wider of women as mothers. contexts within which particular groups of women The ease with which feminist pro-choice argu- seek abortions.5 ments have been connected with Malthusian views This misinterpretation illustrates the tension in the on population control, and have served to justify the idea of ‘‘choice’’ which, on the one hand, acknowl- operation of racist and eugenic policies, notably in edges that women’s decisional and bodily autonomy the US,8 has raised serious questions for feminist is at stake in (anti-) abortion politics, and, on the political theory. Before considering how these diffi- other, facilitates the ‘‘illusion,’’ to use Himmelweit’s culties have been addressed, I will discuss the term (1988, p. 40), that a woman can make a second major problem with a feminist defence of ‘‘private’’ choice free from social, economic, and abortion access in terms of ‘‘a woman’s right to political constraints (Charles, 2000, p. 164). As choose,’’ namely the emergence and success of Petchesky comments, ‘‘... the idea of ‘a woman’s foetal rights advocacy. right to choose’ as the main principle of reproductive freedom is insufficient and problematic at the same Which Rights? time as it is politically compelling’’ (Petchesky, 1986, pp. 6–7). Rights theory is based on the assumption of There are two aspects to the problem with pro- competing recognition claims. As already mentioned, choice privacy claims. Firstly, the definition of ‘‘pri- the second major problem with the ‘‘right to choose’’ vacy’’ is always contestable, and feminists have discourse has been that it has enabled the successful defined it, for example, not as the familial or domes- lobbying for both cultural and official recognition of Feminism and Abortion Politics 337 foetal rights (McNeil, 1991). To evoke rights in the This blend of claims has, for instance, provided context of abortion would seem to affirm the con- the basis for the success of the anti-abortion lobby in struction of pregnancy in adversarial terms, between the Republic of Ireland, where the idea that an foetus and woman, rather than between woman and innocent individual’s life is at risk from women and the state, or between women and men. In other girls is motivating the current Government to reverse words, constructing
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