‘Gendercide’, abortion policy, and the disciplining of prenatal sex-selection in neoliberal Europe

摘要

This article examines the contours of how sex-selective abortion (SSA) and gendercide' have been problematically combined within contemporary debates on abortion in Europe. Analysing the development of policies on the topic, we identify three turns' which have become integral to the biopolitics of SSA in Europe: the biomedical turn, the gendercide' turn, and the Asian demographic turn. Recent attempts to discipline SSA in the UK and Sweden are examined as a means of showing how the neoliberal state in Europe is becoming increasingly open to manoeuvres to undermine the right to abortion, even where firm laws exist.