Conflict and Compromise: Abortion Law Reform in Britain, Canada, and Spain, 1960s–1980s

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URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10481/102995
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Author
Sethna, Christabelle; Davis, Gayle; Ignaciuk, Agata
Materia
abortion law reform
 
abortion services
 
Britain
 
Canada
 
Spain
 
Date
2024
Sponsorship
This paper originated as a panel presentation for the international conference, ‘Au-delà les frontières: cartographie des sexualités et sexualisation des espaces/Beyond Borders: Mapping Sexualities and the Sexualisation of Spaces’, Institut d’Études Transtextuelles et Transculturelles, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, 6-7 May 2021. The authors are grateful for the support of the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada. Gayle Davis’s research was also supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council funding with Sally Sheldon, AH/N00213X/1. Agata Ignaciuk’s analysis of the Spanish case was developed within the research project “Aborto no punible en España: ciencia, asistencia y movimientos sociales (décadas de 1980 y 1990),” ref. PID2020-113312GA-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/.
Abstract
Between the 1960s and 1980s, a wave of abortion law reforms swept through various Western nations. The reforms aimed to clarify extant laws, protect doctors from criminal prosecution, and curtail the toll of backstreet abortions on women’s bodies and lives. They emerged out of a series of conflicts and compromises evident in the design and implementation of new abortion laws which, on the one hand, expanded the parameters for legal abortion, but on the other, criminalized abortions that did not fall within them. Despite divergent historical, political and medical contexts, a transnational comparative analysis of abortion law reform efforts in Britain, Canada, and Spain in this period highlights the conflicts and compromises each experienced, the similarities and dissimilarities in legislation, and the impact of that legislation on medical professionals, abortion providers, and women seeking legal abortion services.
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