Foucault's Reproductive Politics: Targeted Regulation Of Abortion

In the news article “Abortion: Every Woman’s Rights” Sharon Smith wrote an article about women’s rights to get abortions prior to the hearing of the Planned Parenthood v. Casey court case, “which threatened to severely restrict women access to abortion” (Smith). Women wanted reproductive control over their lives and felt that they were not equal to men no matter what advances they got at work and how high their level of education was. The women’s right movement wanted women to have the choice of abortion for all women, the rich and the poor. In the US, thirty- seven states did not provide

“Texas’s new strict legislation is already forcing women to leave the state in order to receive medical services in neighboring states more sympathetic to their desires to obtain an abortion (Hagle).” This is causing many problems for expectant mothers, especially those who have preexisting genetic medical conditions. Many time a mother may have some type of illness that can be given to a fetus during pregnancy. Sometimes these issues are seen during a routine ultrasound and sometimes there are not noticed until the time of birth. This is causing woman who live in the state of Texas to have to cross state lines when they find out something is wrong with their baby and choose to terminate the pregnancy.

In every society whether it was legal or legal, abortions were used to control fertility. In the United States it was practiced legally until about 1880, by then most states had banned it except to save a woman's life. It was widely practiced through the entire period it was illegal. In the 1890’s there were an estimate of two million abortions per year and, one to two million annually during the 1920’s-30’s. Whether a

Before 1973, abortion access was determined by state legislature for each individual state with no consistency across the United States. Some states allowed abortions but most state statues heavily restricted or completely banned abortion. The restricted states would generally only allow abortion in the event of rape, incest, fetal anomalies, or the woman’s life is at risk. The state of Texas enforced a state statute that made it illegal for an abortion to be performed unless the woman’s

least two visit to the abortion facility and a counseling session before the procedure followed by

In Texas, a large cultural controversy has resurfaced. State lawmakers want to introduce a new set of guidelines which would essentially limit the availability of abortions to Texan women. This debate is very clearly divided into two opposing sides: pro-life and pro-choice. The pro-life side wants to pass this law, which says that clinics must be held to hospital grade standards and doctors must have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where the abortion takes place. According to the pro-choice side and abortion clinicians themselves, “the regulations [are] expensive, unnecessary and intended to put many [offices] out of business” (nytimes). This case has made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, meaning that

The United States has been divided now over the issue of abortion for thirty-three years since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973. As of today, over 45 million legal abortions have been performed in the United States. Pro-choice advocates hold these 45 million abortions as being 45 million times women have exercised their right to choose to get pregnant and to choose to control their own bodies. To pro-life, or anti-abortion, advocates these 45 million abortions constitute 45 million murders, a genocide of human life in the United States propagated by the court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade. The debate over abortion in the United States is thus a debate of two extremes. One side argues from the personal liberty of the mother. The

Texas continues to fight women’s rights groups for the life of the “unborn child” and has won on many levels. According to the Texas Abortion Laws, Texas includes mandatory ultrasound imaging and parental consent for minors, and women must make at least four visits to a doctor and receive an ultrasound. Women may only receive a third trimester abortion if it is necessary to prevent death or substantial risk of serious impairment to a women’s physical or mental health, or if fetus has severe and irreversible abnormality. Texas considers an illegal abortion if it destroys the vitality or life of child in birth or before (which otherwise would have been born alive); operating a facility without a license, failure to meet Board of Health standards, or failure to make reports to Department of Health; act preformed after pregnancy with intent to cause termination of pregnancy other than for purpose of birth of live fetus or removal

In Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, the Supreme Court will decide on the constitutionality of 2 provisions from the 2013 Texas law, H.B. 2, which places requirements on physicians who perform abortions and the clinics that they perform them in. The first provision of H.B. 2 requires that physicians, who perform abortions at clinics, have admitting privileges at a hospital 30 miles or closer to every clinic in which they are performing the abortion. The second provision requires that abortion clinics “have facilities equal to an outpatient surgical center.” H.B. 2 was enacted to protect the health of the woman procuring an abortion but will close down a majority of clinics in Texas, which limits where women can go to seek help.

Georgia’s requirements were as follows: firstly, the abortion had to be approved by a hospital abortion committee. Secondly, the procedure could not begin until it had been approved by two other doctors. Finally, abortions were only provided to Georgia citizens. The court ruled these restrictions unconstitutional, as they not only posed an undue burden, but also violated both the woman’s right to privacy and the physicians right to practice.

The first 3 provisions of HB2 were enforced by November 1, 2013; the ASC requirement is currently enjoined pending a US Supreme Court decision, as is the admitting privileges requirement as it applies to 2 Texas facilities.”- American Public Health Association. This shows that the abortion law in Texas is gradually being stricter by time and more improvements have been done in the law that strengthens the law and protected numerous unborn life.

This change in the women’s health care program caused low-income women to not have access to health care services like mammograms and pap smears. Since the closures of Planned Parenthood clinics many women have resulted to going out of the state of Texas just to get abortions and other health care services. Once the House Bill 2 was passed in Texas there were only thirty-nine Planned Parenthood clinics operating in Texas, but only five of the thirty-nine clinics perform abortions. The five clinics in Texas that do perform abortions are in the major cities in Texas. Their needs to be some significant changes made to the House Bill 2. Not all the women who walk into a Planned Parenthood clinic wants to get an abortion. Many women go to Planned Parenthood because they cannot afford to get health care services from private practices or hospitals because it is more expensive than Planned Parenthood. Instead of Texas changing their women’s health care program laws to get Planned Parenthood clinics to be removed from their state, Texas should open other health care clinics to fit their women’s health care program laws if they want to close Planned Parenthood clinics so that low income women can still have affordable health care services.

victory with the Roe v. Wade ruling. This paper will analyze the rise and continuation of

The law passed by the Texas Legislature in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt violates the constitution in two ways. The law requires abortion clinics to operate within 30 miles of a surgical center, and the physician performing or inducing the abortion must have active admitting privileges at said surgical center. By requiring all medical clinics providing abortions to meet specific regulations, the law places undue burden on the affected patients. The law also violates the constitution by attempting to put in place regulations that do not relate to a legitimate state interest.

Since the late 19th century, women’s reproductive health choices in the United States have become increasingly controlled (Solinger, 2013). Abortion, contraceptives, sterilization and even pregnancy itself have become biological processes (Foucault, 2003) that place women in the public eye; their choices becoming the targets of policy and regulation (Solinger, 2013; Foucault, 2003). When these regulations are crafted, the assumption behind them is that they will affect all women equally (Pruitt & Vanegas, 2015). However, there are various factors that change the way that policy and regulation of reproductive health affect women. My dissertation topic will focus on how biopolitical control of specific groups of women is achieved through broadly applied legislation targeting reproductive health. This includes legislation that targets access to abortion, defunds reproductive health care access providers such as Planned Parenthood, and that further medicalizes birth. My theoretical frameworks will center on the work of Patricia Hill Collins and Michel Foucault.