ABSTRACT

The female body has long been the object of legal intervention. The law has, for example, established a medicalised framework for abortion decision making; given legitimacy to the provision of medical treatment to pregnant women and anorexics without their consent; sanctioned the making of judgments about fitness for motherhood through access to fertility treatment services; permitted the scrutiny in court of the sexual history of rape victims; confined the activities of the prostitute and surrogate to private, unprotected arrangements; and failed to accommodate the female criminal providing explanations for her actions within her own body. Undertaking critiques of the ways in which the law discriminates against the female, regulates the female body and constructs an ideal against which real women are measured have been, and continue to be, preoccupations within feminist legal analysis, providing valuable insights into the relationship between the law and its female subject.