Fri att välja: relationer mellan stat och individ i svensk abortlagstiftning

Sammanfattning: The thesis examines the Swedish Abortion Act (abortlagen (1974:595)) and its development from the 1970s until today. The objective is to examine the Abortion Act as a producer of certain relations between the state and the individual – how are the state and the individual constructed through the Act’s wording and its foregoing legislation bills, and how does the meaning of the state and the individual, respectively, change over time? The aim is to discuss how the statuary regulation of ”free” abortion exercises power in both a negative, limiting sense, as well as in a positive, productive sense. The analysis shows that even though the wording of the Abortion Act hasn’t changed much since it came into force in 1975, the small changes reflect the major societal changes of the last decades, and shows significant shifts regarding what meaning is attributed to the state and the individual respectively, as well as how they relate to one another. It appears that when it comes to abortion, the ”freedom of choice” is circumscribed not only by statuary time limits and medical assessments, but also by a number of expectations on the individual and how s/he should be, feel and act.