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Published in: Sexuality Research and Social Policy 4/2019

17-08-2018

Rethinking ‘Risk’ in Sexual and Reproductive Health Policy: the Value of the Reproductive Justice Framework

Authors: Tracy Morison, Sarah Herbert

Published in: Sexuality Research and Social Policy | Issue 4/2019

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Abstract

Using the case of Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy in Aotearoa (New Zealand), this article interrogates the dominant risk discourse in sexual and reproductive health policy. It highlights the tensions between risk discourse and broader equity goals, which are increasingly seen as significant within sexual and reproductive health. Working within a poststructuralist perspective, discursive methodology is used to explore the positioning of youth in ten (10) policy documents. The analysis shows how the risk discourse, along with a developmental discourse, creates three common youth subject positions: youth as at risk and vulnerable, as not-yet citizens, and as especially vulnerable relative to other young people. It demonstrates how these positions may be associated with ‘new’ or covert forms of morality and stigmatisation. Detailing the implications for ethnic minorities in particular, it adds to prior analyses of gender- and class-based inequities. The Sexual and Reproductive Justice framework, which encompasses notions of rights and justice, is discussed as an alternative to risk-based policy development that can attend to sexual and reproductive health inequities.

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Footnotes
1
Note, however, that statistics do not distinguish between teenage pregnancies that are planned and/or wanted and those that are not. Instead teenage pregnancy is problematised in toto, with concerns voiced in policy and elsewhere about young maternal age and assumed poor social, economic, and health outcomes for these women, their children, and wider society (Morison et al., (2018) and see also Breheny and Stephens (2010) and Macleod (2011) on this issue).
 
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Metadata
Title
Rethinking ‘Risk’ in Sexual and Reproductive Health Policy: the Value of the Reproductive Justice Framework
Authors
Tracy Morison
Sarah Herbert
Publication date
17-08-2018
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Sexuality Research and Social Policy / Issue 4/2019
Print ISSN: 1868-9884
Electronic ISSN: 1553-6610
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-018-0351-z

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