Population Control and Sex Selective Abortion in China and India: A Feminist Critique of Criminalization

Purewal, Navtej; Eklund, Lisa

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.

Citation

Purewal, N., & Eklund, L. (2023). Population Control and Sex Selective Abortion in China and India: A Feminist Critique of Criminalization. In M. Dawson, & S. Mobayed (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook on Femicide/Feminicide. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003202332-33

• Acceptance Date: Mar 30, 2022
• Publication Date: May 31, 2023
• Deposit Date: May 6, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 9, 2023
• Publisher: Routledge
• Book Title: Routledge International Handbook on Femicide/Feminicide
• ISBN: 9781032064390
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003202332-33
• Keywords: abortion, sex selection, carcerality