Book Description

This is a presentation of the case for challenging complacency and reconsidering the extent to which British law has interpreted abortion and constructed a medical model in such a way as to place the control over access to abortion services with the medical profession.

Recognizing that abortion has slipped from the political (and specifically feminist) agenda, at least in the UK, the author argues that this systematic "medicalization" of abortion has rendered women powerless.

She acknowledges that "repoliticizing" abortion - and recognizing how gender affects how power is exercised over women - creates its own risks and may mean that feminists face a potentially lethal backlash.

But, she maintains, the failure to do so could close down avenues of choice and control at a time when fundamentalist pressures to eliminate abortion are becoming increasingly powerful.

This critique of the medical, legal and political issues surrounding abortion in the UK, reflects the changes, both insidious and profound, in the range of medical technologies available (including RU486), in case law, legal theory and feminist thinking since Keown's 1988 study "Abortion, Doctors and the Law".

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