Governed through Choice: Autonomy, Technology, and the Politics of Reproduction

✍ Scribed by Jennifer M. Denbow

• Publisher: New York University Press
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 240
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

At the centre of the 'war on women' lies the fact that women in the contemporary United States are facing more widespread and increased surveillance of their reproductive health and decisions. In recent years states have passed a record number of laws restricting abortion. Physicians continue to sterilize some women against their will, especially those in prison, while other women who choose to forego reproduction cannot find physicians to sterilize them. While these actions seem to undermine women's decision-making authority, experts and state actors often defend them in terms of promoting women's autonomy. Jennifer M. Denbow exposes the way that the notion of autonomy allows for this apparent contradiction and explores how it plays out in recent reproductive law, including newly enacted informed consent to abortion laws like ultrasound mandates and the regulation of sterilization.

✦ Table of Contents

Introduction : the possibility of reproductive autonomy --

Autonomy: the self and society --
Abortion and the juridical : reproductive autonomy and protection from injury --
Informed consent laws : ultrasound, surveillance, and postfeminist reproductive rights --
Sterilization : self-governance and the possibility of transformation --
Autonomy, technology, and the politics of reproduction.