Re-producing South Asian Wom(b)en: Female Feticide and the Spectacle of Culture

Arbitrating Abortion: Sex-selection and Care Work among Abortion Providers in England

“…While providers described a commitment to enabling the reproductive decisions of all women, the particular needs of Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani women were unnecessarily (and perhaps incorrectly) read and coded by providers as "cultural" issues based on their "Asian" (read: ethnic, non-White) origin. The views of abortion providers are consistent with how women and men of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian origin encounter racism and cultural stereoyping across the continuum of NHS reproductive care, including antenatal screening, inherited disorders, maternity, and infertility services (Blell 2018;Bowler 1993;Jomeen and Redshaw 2013;Purewal 2003;Shaw 2009).…”

“…We encountered a slippage in references to 'culture' and "religion" (as influencing recourse to SSA) in the interviews conducted with White British providers, which can be situated in a broader context of misunderstanding ethnic minority groups as well as ethnic stereotyping in NHS healthcare provision (cf. Blell 2018;Purewal 2003). To mitigate how participants were influenced by the focus of the project, we probed providers on their encounters with "gender balancing" in the White British population.…”

“…8 To capture the highly dynamic and evolving nature of the politics and governance logics associated ith SSA we also need to account for the moral anxieties around SSA which pre-date the 2012 controversy, and have presented implications for equitable access to reproductive care for "South Asian" women engaging with the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Studies have demonstrated how NHS sonographers discriminatively withheld foetal-sex disclosure when providing ultrasound services to women of "South Asian" origin, as an attempt to protect foetuses that were interpreted as being at "risk" of selective abortion due to "culture" (Purewal 2003(Purewal , 2010. As Purewal demonstrates (2003), providers in England selectively applied ethical controls in reproductive health services at the time to intentionally withhold pregnancy-related information from ethnic minority women.…”

“…And I've probably seen them, not knowing." Her claim that women intent on undertaking SSA will engage in deceitful strategies to access abortion care reflects past anxieties that "South Asian" women covertly practice SSA when accessing NHS maternity care -or whom Purewal (2003) conceptualizes as "devious aborters." One counsellor instead described how the "other" discussions (with non-Asian women) around sex (or "gender balancing") would signal a preference for daughters but no intention to engage in selective abortion, indicating the generalisations on the basis of ethnicity:…”

Making Politics Visible: Discourses on Gender and Race in the Problematisation of Sex-Selective Abortion

“…The technology to enable SSA is widely available and information about the sex of the foetus is commonly provided to expectant parents at prenatal check-ups in the UK. Both research and the anecdotal experience of practitioners who work with South Asian women in the diaspora indicate a widespread preference for sons, leading to pressure on women to produce male progeny (Purewal, 2003), with a failure to do so sometimes resulting in violence (Anitha, 2011). Dubuc and Coleman (2007) used data from the UK registration system for births to compare the child sex ratios of immigrant and UK-born mothers.…”