Abortion, law and the ideology of motherhood: new perspectives on old problems
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many feminist analyses of abortion law in Canada over the last two decades have been characterized by criticism of the failure of legislation and case law to appreciate adequately the interests of women in the matter. As a result they have advocated the pursuit of legislative reform and the demand for legal recognition and judicial protection of women's "right to choose". Despite the substantial fulfilment of these aims, problems of availability and access to abortion services continue to be experienced by Canadian women. This thesis purports to adopt a new, more critical perspective, incorporating an ideological analysis of both past restrictions and current conflicts over abortion regulation, in an attempt to develop fresh insights into the possibilities for feminist strategizing in this area. In highlighting the subtle ways in which law itself facilitates the continued denial of women's reproductive choice, it seeks to discourage the future reliance upon law alone to redress these current injustices. The concept of a "dominant ideology of motherhood" is employed as the theoretical framework from which to examine the role of law in reflecting, and reinforcing dominant ideas about women and their relation to motherhood. An investigation of the ideas most influential in shaping the first nineteenth century prohibition on abortion and, of the understandings manifested in the legal developments secured since, discloses the constancy of certain, oppressive constructions of women in legal forums. Further analysis of how ideological anti-abortion messages have been imported into judicial discourse via the recent abortion injunction cases, suggests that law may not be the most appropriate forum in which to challenge and modify these dominant ideas. Upon these findings, the scope for constructing alternative, revolutionary feminist discourse on abortion is examined. The thesis concludes that deconstruction of the particular and oppressive ideas informing the past and present legal treatment of abortion, and of the ideological nature of law itself, may provide a basis for developing oppositional, "woman-centred" ideas and understandings on the issue. Finally, it is suggested that feminists might make greater progress in the current debate through promoting these ideas in the extra-legal sphere.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.019 | 0.113 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.018 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".