Solving the ‘Woman Problem’ in British Abortion Politics: A Contextualised Account

Abstract

This article

• Explains how a historical account may be usefully combined with an analysis of the constitutive representation of gender in order to provide insights into the substantive representation of women;
• Provides an empirical account of how MPs favouring restrictions on legal abortion have historically constructed women as victims of unethical doctors in order to undermine the foundations of the 1967 Abortion Act;
• Helps explain recent attempts to strip abortion providers of the ability to provide counselling;
• Demonstrates that when set against the medicalised regulatory regime established by the 1967 Act, the contributions of pro-choice MPs may be criticised as problematic attempts to reconcile a feminist abortion politics with the status quo.

In 2011, Parliament debated an amendment to the government's Health and Social Care Bill which would have mandated that abortion counselling be provided by independent organisations. While many attacked the amendment as anti-feminist, its principal sponsor, Nadine Dorries, claimed to be acting on behalf of women. This article argues that a historical approach may be fruitfully utilised in order to make sense of such conflicting ‘feminist’ claims. Through analysis of parliamentary debates, it demonstrates that when historical and discursive context is taken into account, the Dorries amendment can be viewed as part of a broader attack on the foundations of the 1967 Abortion Act. This historical approach also allows the contributions of pro-choice women representatives to be criticised as problematic attempts to reconcile a feminist abortion politics with the status quo.