The midwife case and conscientious objection: new ways of framing abortion in Sweden

ABSTRACT

By examining the arguments presented in courts and in print media to support and oppose the introduction of conscientious objection for healthcare workers in Sweden, this article illustrates the ways in which interest groups may take advantage of expanding opportunity structures in the wake of internationalization, all the while framing their arguments in ways that create resonance with national and nationalist discourses. Focusing on the case of a midwife who sued a county for refusing to hire her after having learned she would not participate in abortions, the article analyzes how both anti- and pro-abortion groups frame the issue of conscientious objection as aligned with “Swedish exceptionalism” in terms of worker co-determination and adherence to international conventions. The article thus strengthens the feminist contention that the issue of abortion, regardless of how precisely it is framed, tends to mobilize nationalist discourses, but also highlights how anti-abortion movements can “think global, act local.”

KEYWORDS:

• Abortion
• conscientious objection
• Sweden
• opportunity structures

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank the editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Rebecca Selberg is Senior Lecturer and Director of Studies in the Department of Gender Studies at Lund University, Sweden. She earned her PhD in sociology at Linnaeus University in 2012. Her main research area is gender, work, and organization, with a special focus on care work and the public sector.

Notes

1 Loosely inspired by Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities, I use “nationalist imaginings” here to refer to competing collective understandings of the imagined community of the nation and of nationalism and/or national belonging (Anderson 1991, 6).

2 At the time of writing, the European Court of Human Rights has not delivered its judgment.

3 Close to 45 percent of the opinion pieces appeared in wide-reaching dailies Aftonbladet, Expressen, Svenska Dagbladet, and Dagens Nyheter, suggesting that this issue was considered less relevant in the local papers.

4 Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (Doc. 11757).

5 Council of Europe, Resolution 1763 (2010).

6 The only party in the Swedish parliament to vote against was the far-right Sweden Democrats; the Christian Democrats abstained.

7 In both quotes, “the Convention” refers to the European Convention on Human Rights.