Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies and Health

Re-situating Abortion: Bio-politics, Global Health and Rights in Neo-liberal Times

Two Day Workshop, November 13-14, 2014

The theme of this two day workshop organised by the centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies and Health (CORTH) is on the cultural analyses of reproductive practices and policies to do with termination and contraception (emergency contraception, abortion, including sex selective abortion). The aim is to bring together researchers, scholars, policy makers, practitioners and activists to focus on the relationship between abortion, globalisation and neoliberal reform. Does the emergence of globalised health discourse, new forms of health governance and rights-based-development paradigms shaping health policy and programmes close down or present new opportunities for re-configuring abortion services, conceptually and ‘on-the-ground’? What kinds of transformations are occurring in medical and legal cultures and what is their effect on practitioners negotiating local realities and on the lived experience of abortion, including access to abortion services in a range of contexts? What are the differing issues, practices, perceptions and policies across the global North and South?  The workshop will also serve as a platform to launch a Reproduction, Technologies and Health Network that will in future be coordinated from CORTH.

Further information

The University of Sussex