School of Humanities & Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia, 3086.
Soc Sci Med. 2024 Aug;355:117098. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117098. Epub 2024 Jul 6.
The medico-legal paradigm enmeshes legal with medical power, making abortion lawfully available only under the supervision of medical professionals. This article examines the recent parliamentary debates over abortion decriminalisation in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state, to argue that the decriminalisation of abortion in Australia represents a continuance with, rather than a break from, the medico-legal paradigm. The medical power embedded in laws that criminalised abortion in the nineteenth century, and liberalised abortion in the twentieth century, was not the same as that imagined by parliamentarians debating decriminalising abortion in the twenty-first century. Norms constituting abortion seekers and their doctors have shifted significantly. Nevertheless, the medico-legal paradigm continues to govern how lawful abortion is imagined. The medico-legal paradigm converts abortion seekers' desires for abortion into a need for healthcare and imagines the autonomy and agency of abortion seekers as enabled only through their subjection to medical power. This conversion, I suggest, dampens the potential abortion holds to open up and challenge norms of gender, sexuality and reproduction.
医学法律范式将法律和医疗权力交织在一起，使得堕胎只有在医疗专业人员的监督下才能合法进行。本文考察了澳大利亚人口最多的州新南威尔士州最近关于堕胎非刑罪化的议会辩论，认为澳大利亚堕胎的非刑罪化代表了对医学法律范式的延续，而不是背离。在 19 世纪将堕胎定罪的法律，以及在 20 世纪使堕胎合法化的法律中所嵌入的医疗权力，与 21 世纪议会辩论堕胎非刑罪化时想象的权力并不相同。构成堕胎寻求者及其医生的规范已经发生了重大转变。然而，医学法律范式仍然主导着合法堕胎的想象方式。医学法律范式将堕胎寻求者的堕胎愿望转化为对医疗保健的需求，并将堕胎寻求者的自主权和代理权想象为只有通过服从医疗权力才能实现。我认为，这种转变抑制了堕胎在开放和挑战性别、性和生殖规范方面的潜力。
