Résumé : This work analyzes the evolving feminist debate over the right to make decisions about one s own body, from the women s lib era of the 1960s to the 1990s. The focus is on the different interpretations elaborated by feminists concerning appropriation of the body, the demand for legal abortion, and the demand for exercise of sexual and reproductive rights. At each stage the arguments are placed in the larger framework of social, economic, cultural, and political trends. The campaigns to legalize abortion in France and the US are described and placed in context. The rationales and viewpoints of different schools of feminist thought, which partially reflect national conditions, are explained. The responses of the antiabortion forces, including the increasing resort to violence beginning in the 1980s, are examined and their impact on feminist arguments debated. The situation in Latin America, where abortion remains illegal almost everywhere, is separately discussed. The impact of the concept of reproductive rights that gained wide acceptance in the 1980s and the different opinions of various feminist groups regarding strategies and positions are discussed. Critique of the western notion of individualism, frequently tied to the concept of rights, has been added to the debate since the mid-1980s. The influence on the feminist debate of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the Conference on Women in Beijing, and of the growing attention to reproductive rights in the population control movement are also discussed.
Notes : Español/espagnol/Spanish, nbsp;Abstract : Popline (http://db.jhuccp.org/popinform/basic.html) - PIP 147506