Book Review
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00239 |
| Published date | 01 December 2002 |
| Date | 01 December 2002 |
Book Review
REGULATING REPRODUCTION: LAW, TECHNOLOGY AND
AUTONOMY by EMILY JACKSON
(Oxford: Hart, 2001, 368 pp., £45.00 (hbk), £16.99 (pbk))
Regulating Reproduction seeks to provide a critical and legal analysis of the
regulation of five aspects of human reproduction. These areas are: birth
control, abortion, pregnancy and childbirth, reproductive technologies, and
surrogacy. This project is not, however, a solely thematic analysis but seeks
to achieve something rather beyond this. At the beginning of the book the
author recognizes that creating a regulatory framework that will
accommodate or withstand ‘all of the ethical dilemmas thrown up by this
rapidly shifting terrain undoubtedly represents one of the most important and
difficult tasks for law in the twenty-first century.’
1
Recognizing this
complexity the book attempts to provide and justify an argument regarding
what might unify the regulatory regimes that we put in place to regulate or
manage human procreation. Jackson’s – deceptively simply stated –
argument is that any regulation should aim to facilitate autonomous
reproductive decision-making.
Before moving on to consider the analysis of the various regulatory
regimes it is worth detailing the author’s understanding of autonomy.
Jackson engages with the multiple critiques of autonomy yet does not
dismiss it. Rather, she dismisses the two-dimensional conception that sees
autonomy as merely ‘boundaries against others’.
2
In its place she argues for a
reconfiguring of autonomy:
My argument here will be that while liberalism’s critics have tended to invoke
a particularly narrow and impoverished conception of autonomy, a broader
and richer understanding of reproductive autonomy may be both descriptively
accurate and normatively desirable.
3
The ‘richer’ or more robust conception of autonomy that is articulated relies
on the work of theorists such as Jennifer Nedelsky who have emphasized the
role of relationships and community in realizing autonomy.
4
Within this
conception respecting autonomy requires more than the traditional liberal
667
ßBlackwell Publishers Ltd 2002, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
1p.1.
2 J. Nedelsky, ‘Reconceiving Autonomy’ (1989) 1 Yale J. of Law and Feminism 7.
3p.2.
4 See, also, J. Nedelsky, ‘Law, Boundaries and the Bounded Self’ (1990) 30
Representations 162; ‘Reconceiving Rights as Relationships’ (1993) Review of
Constitutional Studies 1.
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