What on earth is ‘biopolitics’?

It’s a sociological term coined by Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellen (who also coined the term ‘geopolitics’). French social theorist Michel Foucault invoked it to convey the notion of the exercise of state power over both the physical and political bodies of a population. It covers everything from abortion laws, such as the one that was overturned in last week’s referendum in Ireland, racial politics and eugenics to public policies about the use of biotechnology.

Wasn’t there an Indian angle to the Irish vote?

Yes, it was the 2012 death of Indian-origin dentist Savita Halappanavar in University Hospital in Galway (in Ireland) that set off a campaign for a Constitutional amendment to repeal the Catholic country’s restrictive laws on abortion. Halappanavar was denied a medical termination of pregnancy despite a miscarriage — on the grounds that the foetus still had a heartbeat. In other words, she was a tragic victim of Irish ‘biopolitics’.

So what’s the economic angle to abortion?

In a seminal 2003 paper, ‘Abortion Policy and the Economics of Fertility’, Prof Phillip B Levine at the Wellesley College in Massachusetts drew up a framework for an economic analysis of abortion policy. Across countries, legalisation of abortion, he noted, reduces the number of (presumably unwanted) births. In the US, it reduced births by up to 12 per cent. For the women, the ability to time their childbirth owing to legalised abortion helped them improve their economic well-being. Additionally, legalising abortion improved the living standards of children, too.

How so?

In the US, fewer children were reported to be growing up in single-parent households or in households headed by welfare recipients. That consequentially had the effect of improving educational attainments and labour market outcomes, and lowered the rates of welfare use.

That sounds intuitive.

Yes, but there are also other, rather more controversial, studies centred around the legalisation of abortion.

Tell me more.

A well-known 2001 research titled ‘The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime’, by law professor and economist John J Donahue III at Stanford Law School and Freakonomics -fame economist Steven D Levitt, advanced the claim that legalised abortion had “contributed significantly to recent crime reductions” — by up to 50 per cent.

That sounds a little edgy.

The authors say that in attempting to identify a link between legalised abortion and crime, “we do not mean to suggest that such a link is ‘good’ or ‘just’, but rather, merely to show that such a relationship exists.” Even so, their research received wide criticism.

What’s been India’s experience of abortion laws?

In India, abortion laws are very restrictive, but in any case, the discourse on this has been muddied somewhat.

While the decriminalisation and legalisation of abortion is generally seen as a progressive measure insofar as it gives women agency over their body, given the patriarchal nature of Indian society, it has given rise in the past to other social ills around the availability of abortion services.

Specifically…

Sex-selective abortion, given the preference for male children. The practice has skewed the gender ratio to alarming levels.

You just can’t win, can you?

Just as strikingly, in the absence of adequate legal abortion services, unsafe abortions are effectively killing one woman virtually every two hours in India. Living in denial about this problem isn’t helpful.

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