Foucault and Abortion Law Continued  Term Paper

e., underlying meaning, in terms of power relationships) of a human discourse or discourses [a text may be a poem, song, mission statement, law or other spoken, read, sung, written, or reported language entity conveyed and/or absorbed as written and/or read; sung and/or spoken; quoted and/or paraphrased, etc.] may be interpreted distinctly by separate individuals, nations, religious groups, political parties etc., in ways reflecting various power/knowledge relationships. About science/power (meaning either science as power or science in relationship to power) relationships in particular (abortion law, internationally and comparatively, fits that category, because abortion is, first a procedure only made possible by science; and science, as embodied by exclusively-educated and trained medical clinicians in particular, is the abstract entity that makes possible abortion in general); a doctor, based on the doctor's medical knowledge, possesses power to accept or reject a patient for an abortion for scientific reasons (e.g., length of pregnancy; current or future health of mother and/or fetus).

Of all reasons for a society to either grant or deny women abortions, scientifically-based reasons having to do with either health or length of pregnancy are the most compelling, internationally (see "Abortion Law; Gallagher; the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life).

This is, as Foucault, would explain it, the power of science in particular, as a branch of knowledge. Acquisition of such specialized (and therefore elite) knowledge [and this is also how the 'science as power' equivalency forms] of, for example, which particular women wanting abortions may safely have them, and given that, how an abortion procedure must be done. Scientific authority, though, is sometimes not the highest authority when it comes to abortion law(s). First, those in scientific authority, over, say, a young woman wanting an abortion, which she…