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Birth Technologies: Prenatal Diagnosis and Abortion Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

John Brigham ,
Janet Rifkin  and
Christine G. Solt
John Brigham*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, USA
Janet Rifkin
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, USA
Christine G. Solt
Affiliation:
Harvard Law School, USA
*
Dr. Brigham at the Department of Political Science, Thompson Hall 434, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
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Abstract

This study of “birth technologies” such as amniocentesis and ultrasound explores their relationship to law in a correlative area, abortion politics, in order to assess the indirect influence of politics on technology. We begin nearly twenty years ago when these technologies were emerging and trace the story to the early 1990s. Our analysis suggests that abortion politics, filtered through such activities as grant-making and basic research, influenced the development of these technologies. We therefore propose a model of policy that includes both the relatively independent march of scientific research and technical applications and the operation of constraining forces, like political interests, on science and technique. Here, law is a vehicle that itself becomes illuminated as both politics and substance.

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , February 1993 , pp. 31 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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