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Purewal, Navtej and Eklund, Lisa (2023) 'Population Control and Sex Selective Abortion in China and India: A Feminist Critique of Criminalization.' In: Dawson, Myrna and Mobayed, Saide, (eds.), Routledge International Handbook on Femicide/Feminicide. London: Routledge.

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Abstract

This chapter outlines some of the key concerns with criminalising sex-selective abortion (SSA) in China and India, highlighting that it offers no identifiable options for sustainable, women-centred, progressive change. Instead, the criminalisation of SSA sits firmly within other forms of carceral feminism. Framing SSA as “female foeticide,” “femicide,” or “gendercide” is problematic, as such terms advance arguments for limiting women’s access to safe abortion through the indication and synonymisation of abortion with the notion of killing. Such a conflation of abortion and killing runs many risks in compromising the long struggles of feminist movements globally to defend access to safe abortion. While representing different ideological regimes, in both contexts, criminalising SSA has contributed to and bolstered the assertion of state power but without the feminist structural analysis of what generates son preference and daughter aversion.

Item Type: Book Chapters
Keywords: abortion, sex selection, carcerality
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > Department of Development Studies
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Women
ISBN: 9781032064390
Copyright Statement: This is the version of the chapter accepted for publication in Dawson, Myrna and Mobayed, Saide, (eds.), Routledge International Handbook on Femicide/Feminicide. London: Routledge (2023). Re-use is subject to the publisher’s terms and conditions
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003202332-33
Date Deposited: 06 May 2022 18:31
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/36972

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