Abortion and the Limits of the Personal Becoming Political

Bibliographic Data

ID5854962
AuthorsBarbara Baird (0000-0002-2444-682X)
Year2018
Volume33
Issue95
Pages129-146
Publication date2018-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAustralian Feminist Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1321-7568 • E-ISSN: 1465-3303
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/08164649.2018.1498735
OpenAlexW2887153394
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited11

This article offers a historical account of the changing politics of abortion in Australia in the late 1960s and early-mid 1970s. The article first focuses on women’s personal stories of seeking and having an abortion and what they make of these experiences. It considers how these were made political through the Women’s Liberation Movement, at the Royal Commission into Human Relationships and in the pages of the new women’s magazines of the early 1970s. It then considers changes in access to abortion services in the early 1970s and finds that the political weight and authority of women’s stories about their need for abortion were not so effective in this arena. The article avoids universalising claims about the effects of making the personal political and argues for attention to the particularities of the effects of this shift. It also observes that the medical profession and the public health system put significant limits on the newly public demands made by women in relation to abortion. It concludes that reshaping the relationship between the personal and political does not necessarily guarantee women’s reproductive rights when these are claimed through liberal discourse and subsumed to medical authority in the private market of healthcare

Abortion · Art · Literature · Narrative · Personal account · Political science · Politics · Pregnancy · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Canadian Identity and History · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Gender Studies · History · Law