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Readings on Abortion

In an effort to further public understanding of abortion and Roe v. Wade, we are offering free access to these relevant journal articles and book chapters.


ABORTION IN ASIA
Local Dilemmas, Global Politics
Edited by Andrea Whittaker

“[This book] makes an empirically rich and important contribution to social scientific scholarship on induced abortion practices and will hopefully inspire further studies.”  ·  Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale

Chapter 1: Abortion in Asia: an overview
Andrea Whittaker

ABORTION IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY TUNISIA
Politics, Medicine and Morality
Irene Maffi

“Maffi clearly describes the discourses and practices of clinic staff as a particular form of reproductive governance based on the history of Tunisia. However, the examples Maffi provides—of stigmatizing language and admonishments by clinic staff against women who have multiple abortions or who become pregnant while not adhering to a birth control regimen—are not unique to the Tunisian context. Indeed, the potential for comparisons between the Tunisian context and other biomedical settings is one of the major contributions of this work.” • Medical Anthropology Quarterly

Read Introduction

Chapter 2. Female Bodies, Contraception and Reproductive Norms

THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE FETUS
Biology, Culture, and Society
Edited by Sallie Han, Tracy K. Betsinger, and Amy B. Scott
Foreword by Rayna Rapp

“This volume, offering a breadth of perspectives on the human foetus, appears at an important time. As the editors compellingly show in rich and complex detail, foetuses cannot exist apart from maternal bodies, and efforts to separate the two are further manifestations of the perennial struggle over who controls human reproduction.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)

Chapter 10. Beyond Life Itself: The Embedded Fetuses of Russian Orthodox Anti-Abortion Activism
Sonja Luehrmann

CULTURES OF ABORTION IN WEIMAR GERMANY
Cornelie Usborne

“[The author’s] careful analysis of multiple discourses, makes clear how innovative the debate over abortion in Weimar Germany was. The popular cultural evidence and the medical discourse and the criminal law cases tell us somewhat different things about how abortion was understood at this historical moment; Usborne’s analysis and juxtaposition of these various meanings is masterful and persuasive.”  ·  H-German

Chapter 2. Cultural Representation: Abortion on Stage, Screen and in Fiction

A FRAGMENTED LANDSCAPE
Abortion Governance and Protest Logics in Europe
Edited by Silvia De Zordo, Joanna Mishtal, and Lorena Anton

“This edited volume does not only offer gender historians a rich source, but should also be of interest to historians of social movements and legal historians who have to face the fact that an expected process like ‘liberalization’ is created by economic and material factors as well as subterranean techniques of subjectivization and does not reveal any direction but presents a constellation that can switch position any time.” · H-Soz-Kult

Read Introduction

Chapter 1. Legal and Political Discourses on Women’s Right to Abortion
Christina Zampas

SISTERS IN ARMS
Militant Feminisms in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1968
Katharina Karcher

“Karcher’s study of militant feminism encourages scholars to re-think the history of feminism, and reflect on how changes to feminist politics and practice have shaped what is considered feminist, and the writing of feminism, more broadly.” • English Historical Review

Chapter 3. Militant Feminist Protest against the Abortion Ban

Further reading on reproductive healthcare

NEW SERIES The Anthropology of Obstetrics and Obstetricians: The Practice, Maintenance, and Reproduction of a Biomedical Profession

These ground-breaking edited collections seek to fill that gap by officially creating an “anthropology of obstetrics and obstetricians” across countries and cultures—including biopolitical and professional cultures—so that a broad and deep understanding of these maternity care providers and their practices, ideologies, motivations, and diversities can be achieved.


Journal Articles

Berghahn Journals is offering free access to the following relevant articles.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN CULTURES

‘Fight Abortion, Not Women’: The Moral Economy Underlying Russian Feminist Advocacy
Michele Rivkin-Fish (Vol. 27, Issue 2)
DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2018.270203

ANTHROPOLOGY IN ACTION

Publicly Funded Abortion and Marginalised People’s Experiences in Catalunya: A Longitudinal, Comparative Study
Bayla Ostrach (Vol. 27, Issue 1)
DOI: 10.3167/aia.2020.270103

ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE EAST

Changes in Attitudes towards Marriage and Reproduction among People with a Genetic Illness: A Study of Patients with Thalassemia in Iran
Sachiko Hosoya (Vol. 12, Issue 2)
DOI: 10.3167/ame.2016.120203

SOCIAL ANALYSIS

Belonging: Comprehending Subjectivity in Vietnam and Beyond
Tine M. Gammeltoft (Vol. 62, Issue 1)
DOI: 10.3167/sa.2018.620106

SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY/ANTHROPOLOGIE SOCIALE

Repealing Ireland’s Eighth Amendment: Abortion rights and democracy today
Ela Drążkiewicz, Thomas Strong, Nancy Scheper‐Hughes, Hugh Turpin, A Jamie Saris, Joanna Mishtal, Helena Wulff, Brigittine French, Pauline Garvey, Daniel Miller, Fiona Murphy, Louise Maguire, and Máire Ní Mhórdha (Vol. 28, Issue 3)
DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12914