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Feminist Accounts of Abortion

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Abortion

Abstract

For a feminist, the primary ethical feature of abortion is that pregnancy occurs inside women’s bodies and that unwanted pregnancy has profound effects on women’s lives. Feminist analysis of abortion takes a wide lens and includes discussion of access to abortion, the experiences of women using abortion services, women’s reasons for abortion, reproductive autonomy, sexual violence, and power. Feminists support abortion on demand, at least for early abortions. Women are best placed to make informed decisions about their pregnancies, and therefore access to abortion should not be mediated via doctors. Abortion services should be accessible, timely, free (or at least affordable) open, supportive, and patient-centered.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An exception to this principle would be where the pregnant woman is generally incompetent to make health decisions and has some alternative surrogate decision-maker in place. This of course applies to a tiny minority of abortion decisions. It is also worth noting that women with mental incapacity may have been subject to forced sterilization to control their fertility (thanks to the anonymous reviewer for making this point).

  2. 2.

    However, both limited sex education and state policies limiting the number of children affect males as well as females.

  3. 3.

    I do not raise viability as a feature here. Both Mackenzie and Sherwin discuss inherent features of the fetus as potentially relevant to moral status, for example, its capacity to move (quickening) and its capacity to form direct social relationships with other people post-birth. Viability, by contrast, is more a feature of the external medical context, than a feature of the fetus itself. Viability currently ranges from 23 weeks to 37 weeks depending on the medical care available. A fetus is considered full term at 37 weeks.

  4. 4.

    Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice, University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand

    Angela Ballantyne

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  1. Angela Ballantyne
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Correspondence to Angela Ballantyne .

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  1. School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Alireza Bagheri

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Ballantyne, A. (2021). Feminist Accounts of Abortion. In: Bagheri, A. (eds) Abortion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63023-2_21

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