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10 - The embryonic sovereign and the biological citizen: the biopolitics of reproductive rights

from Part III - Platforms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2012

By
Patrick Hanafin
Edited by
Conor Gearty  and
Costas Douzinas
Conor Gearty
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Costas Douzinas
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
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Summary

[T]he role of church–state relations . . . in laying a particular path for bioethical governance . . . in countries with a strong Catholic influence at institutional levels . . . show[s] the . . . difficulties in dealing with the legacy of the church regarding . . . definitions of the embryo.

Italy’s soul searching on how to come to terms with [human embryonic stem cell] research addressed questions about what life is and what it should be, about who is allowed to speak and act on it, and about the appropriate places of law and the state in answering these.

[T]he right to life explodes an already ambiguous notion of ‘human rights’.

When individuals in liberal democratic societies attempt to win greater control over decision-making about their bodies they are engaged in an unequal power struggle with the state. In order to win more freedom they must of necessity go before the law in order to assert these rights or lobby the government for a change in legislation. This active intervention by the individual to win such power has been defined by Nikolas Rose and Carlos Novas as biological citizenship. This term describes the phenomenon whereby individuals increasingly define their citizenship in terms of their rights to life, health and cure. This active form of citizenship also has an ethical dimension for Rose. Rose uses the term ethopolitics to define this aspect of biological citizenship. Within this ethopolitical mode individuals ‘use their individual and collective lives, the evidence of their own existence . . . [to] demand civil and human rights . . . They call for recognition, respect, resources . . . control over medical and technical expertise.’ Rose’s notion of ethopolitics allows us to visualise the potential of deliberative participative politics within the context of reproductive rights.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights Law , pp. 191 - 213
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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