Aims

The regulation of reproductive rights has evoked strong reactions over the course of the twentieth-century, and continues to polarise opinions today. Women’s rights to access abortion vary significantly, both globally and within Europe, and while in many respects women’s access to legal abortion has expanded over the last 100 years, this picture is not universal, and it is far from clear that this direction of travel will be maintained.

The module situates debates about access to, and regulation of, abortion within a broader framework of reproductive rights, regulations, and bioethics. It focuses on the UK and Ireland, where abortion provisions diverge significantly, despite geographical proximity, situating this picture within a broader international picture to tease out generalizable and distinctive features. Structurally, it entwines a loosely chronological with a thematic approach, intersecting macro- and micro-level analysis and case studies. While pro-natalist policies predominated in the early years of the twentieth century, national policies and practices diverged over the course of the century, shaped in non-linear ways by medical politics, feminism, sexual politics, eugenics, and discourses about disability, politics, economics and religion. This module encourages students to evaluate the role played by these factors in shaping policy, practice, experience and activism, and reconfiguring debates about rights, choice and autonomy in different eras and locations. Feminist activism, for example, has been a driving force behind campaigns to legalise and protect access to abortion, but has also played a role in campaigns for better provisions for mothers. Efforts to restrict the right to reproduce often targeted disabled people, but some disabled people and their advocates in turn have sought to restrict people’s rights to access abortion on the grounds of foetal abnormality.

Outline Of Syllabus

Indicative content:

Block 1: Pregnancy, Birth and Infant Care
•       War is good for babies? Pro-natalism and empire states
•       Feminist challenges to the medicalization of pregnancy and birth
•       Surrogacy and IVF
•       Ireland’s mother and baby homes

Block 2: Abortion
•       Accessing contraception
•       The 1967 Abortion Act: politics and feminist activism
•       The prolife movement and the rise of fetal rights
•       Abortion in Ireland

Block 3: Disability and Eugenics
•       Eugenics and sterilisation
•       Newgenics? Prenatal screening and disability rights

Training on poster design skills will be integrated into the teaching programme

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

SEMINARS encourage independent study and promote improvements in oral presentation, interpersonal communication, problem-solving skills, research skills and adaptability.

LECTURES enable students to gain a wider sense of historical argument and debate and how such debates operate, which also allows them to develop comparisons between different historiographical debates.

FILM SESSION: we have assigned a two hour slot to introduce, view and discuss valuable primary source film materials for this topic. If feasible, we will incorporate a guest lecture within this slot.

WORKSHOP: One workshop will introduce students to the range of primary sources available on this topic, many of which are available online, and will highlight issues we need to consider when analyzing these materials. The second workshop will provide students with guidance on poster design (e.g. aesthetic considerations, conveying ideas effectively succinctly to wider audiences, and will offer some pointers on planning and completing the essay assignment. The third workshop enables formative assessment to take place; students will present their draft posters to module staff and fellow students, to secure feedback.

SURGERY TIME: Staff will offer slots for students to discuss engaging with the primary source materials, and preparing for the assignments.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Work submitted during the delivery of the module forms a means of determining the student’s progress.

Assessed Work:

You will be given a set of primary source documents relating to each of the blocks in the module and a list of essays. The two summative assessments are linked, so you should choose primary sources that are related to your essay question.

You will design a poster around a key theme in the sources. You can share a draft version of this poster at a timetabled workshop session to receive verbal feedback from your tutors and fellow students (the formative assessment), and use this feedback to rework your poster, which you will then submit as summative assessment one. The written feedback from your tutor on the final version of the poster will then feed forward to your extended essay (summative assessment 2), allowing greater precision and analysis.

Both assignments will be submitted and marked online.