Degendering Reproduction
![handle is hein.journals/medlr16 and id is 350 raw text is: Medical Law Review, 16, Autumn 2008, pp. 346-368
doi:10.1093/medlaw/fwn016
Advance Access Publication August 11, 2008
DEGENDERING REPRODUCTION?
EMILY JACKSON*
I. INTRODUCTION
Feminists have long been interested in how men and women's uneven
reproductive roles have influenced their relative status in society.
Women's place in the home, workforce and civil society has been
directly traced to the biological fact that it is women and not men
that have babies.1 I cannot improve upon the description given by
Hale L.J., as she then was, in Parkinson v. StJames and Seacroft Univer-
sity Hospital NHS Trust,2 of the sheer hard work involved in pregnancy,
childbirth and in being a mother:
From the moment a woman conceives, profound physical changes
take place in her body and continue to take place not only for the
duration of the pregnancy but for some time thereafter. Those phy-
sical changes bring with them a risk to life and health greater than
in her non-pregnant state.. .along with those physical changes go
psychological changes.. some may amount to a recognised
psychiatric disorder, while others may be regarded as beneficial,
and many are somewhere in between. ...Along with these physical
and psychological consequences goes a severe curtailment of per-
sonal autonomy. Literally, one's life is no longer just one's own
but also someone else's... continuing the pregnancy brings a host
of lesser infringements of autonomy related to the physical
changes in the body or responsibility towards the growing child.
The process of giving birth is rightly termed 'labour'. It is hard
work, often painful and sometimes dangerous. It brings the preg-
nancy to an end but it does not bring to an end the changes
brought about by the pregnancy. It takes some time for the body
to return to its pre-pregnancy state, if it ever does, especially if
the child is breast fed. There are well known psychiatric illnesses
associated with childbirth and the baby blues are very common...
* Professor of Law, London School of Economics. An early version of this paper
was presented at 'Engendering Bioethics', an AHRC Centre for Law, Gender
and Sexuality research workshop in healthcare and bioethics, Keele Univer-
sity, 17-18 November 2005.
1 For a radical perspective, see S. Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (The Woman's
Press 1979).
2 [2001] 3 W.L.R. 376, C.A.
Medical Law Review © The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
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