The King versus Aleck Bourne

Costa, De

doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2009.tb02762.x

Cited by 327 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…A challenge to the scope of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, the case legally formalised and extended medical discretion in the management of abortion. Generally considered to be a pivotal moment in the development of abortion law (Grubb, 1990), Bourne was subsequently adopted in most common law jurisdictions (United Nations Population Division, 2002; de Costa, 2009) and a series of cases in the mid 1990s confirmed that the case applied as a precedent in Northern Ireland (McGleenan, 1994; Capper, 2003; Drislane, 2009). As such, Bourne provides an important bridge between the development of nineteenth and twentieth century legal responses to abortion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Abortion Law and Professional Boundaries

Thomson

2013

Social & Legal Studies

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The medical profession’s formative role in the development of abortion law has been acknowledged. A number of the studies to have considered the development of law in the nineteenth century have traced how the emerging profession’s campaigns against abortion advanced its social and economic goals. Analysis of abortion law as a focus for medicine’s professionalisation has not, however, extended into the twentieth century. Consideration of this period generally characterises medicine’s influence as a product of its professional power. Rather than evidence of a static professional status, this article argues that consideration of the first half of the twentieth century reveals how abortion remained the terrain on which the profession actively pursued its occupational ambitions. Further, it highlights how medical responses to abortion changed as the imperatives of professionalisation changed. Employing work that has highlighted the importance of boundaries for enduring social entities, this article recognises abortion as a boundary issue for the profession; that is, a key site where professional jurisdiction is asserted. A dynamic model of the processes of professionalisation, and an identification of the role of abortion in medicine’s professionalisation project, is essential in order to understand the contemporary social and legal reality of abortion.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%