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ABSTRACT
This article examines the contours of how sex-selective abortion (SSA) and ‘gendercide’ have been problematically combined within contemporary debates on abortion in Europe. Analysing the development of policies on the topic, we identify three ‘turns’ which have become integral to the biopolitics of SSA in Europe: the biomedical turn, the ‘gendercide’ turn, and the Asian demographic turn. Recent attempts to discipline SSA in the UK and Sweden are examined as a means of showing how the neoliberal state in Europe is becoming increasingly open to manoeuvres to undermine the right to abortion, even where firm laws exist.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful for invaluable comments from three anonymous peer reviewers on an earlier draft of this article. We also thank Karin Gottvall at The National Board of Health and Welfare in Swedish for providing useful background information on abortion in Sweden.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Abortion is illegal in all circumstances in Malta and Ireland while it is only permitted in Poland if meant to save a woman's life or protect her physical health.
2 The UK and Sweden are the two countries in Europe where the legal limit for abortion ‘on demand’ is the latest: 24 and 18 weeks, respectively, whereas it is 10–12 weeks in most other countries in Europe.
3 It should be noted that the UK in June 2016 voted for leaving the EU, but at the time of writing this article, UK was still a EU member state.
4 Sex-selection first appeared in the 1997 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine: Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine of the Council of Europe (European Treaty Series – No. 164). Article 14 of the convention states: ‘The use of techniques of medically assisted procreation shall not be allowed for the purpose of choosing a future child’'s sex, except where serious hereditary sex-related disease is to be avoided’. The treaty concerns medically assisted procreation, but does not refer to abortion. Out of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, 35 states have signed and 29 states have ratified the treaty. While the UK never signed the treaty, Sweden signed it in 1999, but never ratified it.
6 For a detailed and critical analysis of abortion law in the UK and the Serious Crime and Abortion Amendment Act, see Sheldon (Citation2015).
8 Professor David Coleman, one of the authors of the study widely cited by the anti-abortion lobbyists behind the Serious Crime Bill amendment, was also a co-founder of the think tank Migration Watch UK. It could be inferred that the ‘deviant aborters' which are at the centre of the 2015 abortion debate are projected in the cited study through a conservative, populist migration watchdog lens as well as through a framing of ‘health services under pressure’ by immigrants with deviant reproductive health issues.
9 A subsequent report b the Department of Health was published in August 2015 in following up the Serious Crime Act which set out a strategy in continuing to assess how and to what extent sex-selection is being accessed in the UK https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/456642/sex_selection_doc.pdf.
10 Jeena International, Karma Nirvana, Muslim Women's Network UK and the Sharan Project were the organisations behind the campaign to highlight gendercide as an issue of interest for the UK anti-abortion lobby pushing for the Abortion Amendment Act of the Serious Crime Bill. The petition led by Jeena International was signed not only by these women's organisations but also faith organisations who did not share in the analysis with others that this represented an encroachment of the right to abortion.
11 The following clauses were hence flagged up:
(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, a person shall not be guilty of an offence under the law relating to abortion when a pregnancy is terminated by a registered medical practitioner if two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion, formed in good faith – [F1(a)that the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family; or
(b) that the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; or
(c) that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated; or
(d) that there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped
13 The midwife Ellinor Grimmark was denied employment as a midwife by employers in the Swedish health care sector due to her refusal to perform abortion services ‘in the name of freedom of conscience’. The case was reviewed by the Swedish Equality Ombudsman, who found no wrongdoing on the part of the employers. Still pursuing her right to freedom of conscience, Grimmark put forward her case for trial in the Swedish Labour court in January 2017 and is backed by the US-based Christian anti-abortion lobby organisation Alliance Defending Freedom. http://www.sydsvenskan.se/2017-01-24/ratten-till-abort-gar-fore-samvetsfrihet.