Medicalisation, depoliticisation and reproductive stratification: lessons from Canada's Muskoka Initiative

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Sociology of Health
• Reproductive Health Policy

Background:

• Global maternal health initiatives often focus on medical interventions.
• Past development policies have utilized overt population control strategies.
• Critical discourse analysis offers insights into policy framing and its consequences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To critically analyze the medicalization of global maternal health.
• To examine how the Muskoka Initiative (2010-2015) framed maternal health and family planning.
• To explore the implications of medicalized discourses for reproductive justice and stratification.

Main Methods:

• Critical discourse analysis of the Muskoka Initiative documents.
• Application of reproductive justice and biopolitical theories.
• Examination of policy language and its underlying assumptions.

Main Results:

• The Muskoka Initiative medicalized maternal health, defining it as risk management.
• Family planning was positioned as a risk-minimizing strategy to avert pregnancy in high-risk populations.
• Medicalized discourses have replaced overt population control, yet continue to discourage reproduction among certain groups.

Conclusions:

• Medicalization depoliticizes and technocratizes global maternal health.
• This approach reinforces reproductive stratification, disproportionately affecting racialized women in the Global South.
• Medicalized language in development policy serves to subtly control reproduction.