The article seeks to understand the conceptions of ‘risk’ produced in the
medical field as they come to be interpreted in the legal field. It draws
on legal decisions concerning authorization for aborting fetuses bearing
anomalies incompatible with life, and on non-directive interviews with
medical doctors and magistrates. The category of ‘risk’ was found to be
subject to considerable manipulation by both doctors and magistrates in
being deployed as moral justification for the abortion of non-viable fetuses.
Abortion is thus displaced from the sphere of individual choice to the
domain of therapeutic abortion. The article also highlights the polyvalence
of risk discourse, since this notion is deployed both to affirm and to deny
legal authorizations for abortion, and to attribute responsibility for abortion
decisions to doctors.
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Author Name: Juliana Lopes de Macedo
URL: View PDF
Keywords: Risk, Abortion, Legal Field, Medical Field.
ISSN: 1809-4341
EISSN:
EOI/DOI: DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590
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