Restoration of gender inequalities through anti-abortion reforms: Can Teubner’s “anonymous matrix of communications” help feminists?

This article is a response to the new wave of legal changes restricting access to abortion in several countries across the world, which have substantially undermined the global advances in the field of reproductive rights observed in recent years. To address this problem, the article derives insights from two important bodies of literature that are usually perceived as theoretically and ideologically counterposed, namely feminist legal studies and systems theory. In juxtaposing two important academic literatures, the article exposes gaps in both, and it demonstrates the conceptual potentials inherent in this juxtaposition. The article engages with the work of Drucilla Cornell and Gunther Teubner, who – despite their very different intellectual backgrounds – provided progressive interpretations of systems theory. It further critically examines whether societal constitutionalism can help feminists explain the recent developments in abortion law across the world. It engages critically with Teubner’s arguments concerning the role that human rights play in constraining the expansive tendencies of social systems, such as politics and religion, revealing the limitations of Teubner’s arguments in relation to reproductive rights and justice. At the same time, the article helps restate the contemporary relevance of systems-theoretical approaches in atypical fields like reproductive justice and gender studies.