Sex, Pregnancy, and Abortion among Unmarried Women in India

Based on 45 in-depth interviews offering first-hand accounts of the decisions and stigma attached to abortions among unmarried women in India, Janice Lazarus shows how Brahmanical patriarchy influences abortion discourses and experiences, and in so doing, highlights how caste, class, and gender intersect with the legacies of India's population-control and family-planning policies.In an important contribution to the existing scholarship on sex and abortion in India--which focuses predominantly on married women, sex-selective abortions, and legal frameworks--the wealth of original stories Lazarus gathers here show, on a deeply personal level, what it means for unmarried women to engage in sex, get pregnant, and have abortions within the pervasive, ongoing patriarchal environment that considers out-of-marriage sex taboo. What comes out of all this is a picture of abortion stigma as a social process that is embedded in hierarchical social structures of caste, class, and gender, and that works as a mechanism to sustain and maintain these hierarchical systems. These findings are important for postgraduates, researchers, and policymakers interested in public heath, feminism, gender and sexuality, sociology, and development studies.