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4 - The Battle for Normalisation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

Sally Sheldon ,
Gayle Davis ,
Jane O'Neill  and
Clare Parker
Sally Sheldon
Affiliation:
University of Bristol and University of Technology Sydney
Gayle Davis
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Jane O'Neill
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Clare Parker
Affiliation:
University of Adelaide
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Summary

Chapter 4 explores how the Abortion Act became embedded in daily life: abortion for non-medical reasons became gradually more widely accepted, services were embedded and streamlined and abortion technologies became safer and less technically demanding. We consider how dispute would now come increasingly to turn on the ‘normalisation’ (or ’trivialisation’) of abortion. While these disputes would find focus in contestation regarding the meaning of the Abortion Act, they were always also about far more, lying along a fault line between competing visions of gender, family, religion, science and society.

Keywords

Normalisation of abortiontrivialisation of abortionabortion servicesBPASabortion daycarethe abortion pillthe ’abortion industry’Operation Rescuesex-selective abortionabortion and disability
Type
Chapter
Information
The Abortion Act 1967
A Biography of a UK Law
 , pp. 109 - 150
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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