Medicalisation, depoliticisation and reproductive stratification

Lessons from Canada's Muskoka Initiative

Bibliographic Data

ID4367490
AuthorsJohn Potvin (0000-0002-8859-4944, University of Guelph, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume26
Issue1
Pages101-123
Publication date2025-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/14647001241238622
PMID39867456
OpenAlexW4394822021
LanguageEN
References cited47

Based on critical discourse analysis of Canada's Muskoka Initiative (2010-15), this article outlines how medicalisation contributes to the depoliticisation and technocratisation of global maternal health, while reinforcing patterns of reproductive stratification. By constructing maternal health as a problem of managing medicalised risk, the Muskoka Initiative was able to position family planning as a risk-minimising practice that can improve health by averting pregnancy among populations deemed high risk. Interpreting this construction through the lenses of reproductive justice and biopolitics, I argue that this construction contributes to reproductive stratification and exemplifies how medicalised discourses have replaced overt discourses of population control within development policy, while continuing to discourage reproduction among racialised women in the Global South

Political science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Global Maternal and Child Health · Health and Conflict Studies · Reproductive Health and Technologies

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