Foucault and Abortion Law (Continued)

Foucault and Abortion Law (continued)

'Foucault-inflected' Analysis of Abortion Law as Human language Discourse Text

French 20th century philosopher-cultural theorist Michel Foucault's theories focus on relationships of human power to knowledge and discourses, and on manifestations of these in real life based on various (and varied) power dynamics - between and/or among individuals; institutions; and other entities. In fact, Foucault considers "the question at the center of everything" to be "what is power?" ("Strategies of Power: Michel Foucault" 41). According to Foucault, the concept of power within human language discourses represents:

mode of action not directly or immediately acting upon others... It acts on others' actions instead: an action upon an action, on existing actions or on actions that may occur now or in the future...[power] incites, and seduces, and it either simplifies or makes more difficult; in an extreme sense it constrains or absolutely forbids [translation mine] (Surveiller et punir 220)

Thus the kind of particular discursive power, as opposed to, say, "power over an object" ("Strategies of Power: Michel Foucault" 44) characteristically analyzed in Foucault's explorations of power/knowledge/discourse, most famously within his best-known work that focuses on power relationships in prisons and other institutions, Discipline and Punish [Surveiller et punir] (1977; [1975]), concerns power relationships as determined by our and/or others actions, in succession and combination. I will suggest here that, in terms of a particular given human language discourse text, in this case abortion law(s), nationally and/or internationally (or comparatively); using Foucault's theory of language/knowledge/power relationships, in order to analyze abortion law as a discursive text, may help us to understand abortion law-as-discursive text better, especially in terms of multi-level; multi-layered; inherently hierarchical imbedded language/knowledge/power relationships inevitably imbedded within such a text.

According to Foucault the text (i.e., underlying meaning, in terms of power relationships) of a human discourse or discourses [a text may be a poem, song, mission statement, law or other spoken, read, sung, written, or reported language entity conveyed and/or absorbed as written and/or read; sung and/or spoken; quoted and/or paraphrased, etc.] may be interpreted distinctly by separate individuals, nations, religious groups, political parties etc., in ways reflecting various power/knowledge relationships. About science/power (meaning either science as power or science in relationship to power) relationships in particular (abortion law, internationally and comparatively, fits that category, because abortion is, first a procedure only made possible by science; and science, as embodied by exclusively-educated and trained medical clinicians in particular, is the abstract entity that makes possible abortion in general); a doctor, based on the doctor's medical knowledge, possesses power to accept or reject a patient for an abortion for scientific reasons (e.g., length of pregnancy; current or future health of mother and/or fetus).

Of all reasons for a society to either grant or deny women abortions, scientifically-based reasons having to do with either health or length of pregnancy are the most compelling, internationally (see "Abortion Law; Gallagher; the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life).