재생산 규범을 둘러싼 물음들 : 낙태죄 헌법불합치 결정과 관련하여

On April 11, 2019, the Constitutional Court's decision on the crime of abortion as nonconforming to the Korean Constitution (2017 Heonba 127) made women's life looked back once again in relation to the reproductive norm. In the light of Butler's argument about the relationship between norms and life - norms are based on the context of life, that define, eliminate, or limit the conditions of life themselves, and artuculate what maximizes the possibility of life and minimizes the likelihood of death as well as symbolize power operating through norms within norms, the issues of abortion as a matter of power are political that raise the question of whose knowledge exercises dominion and whose knowledge acts as a power. Butler pointed out that the right to self-determination is controlled through norms, and as a New Geender Politics, recommended to relate to the continuum of human beings on the basis of interrelationships in life in order to ensure that human beings are human and that norms do not produce discriminatory meaning through exclusion. On the other hand, since pregnancy and childbirth are considered as ‘natural’ to women, they have been regarded as ‘exploitable for free’ just like childcare and housework. The vulnerability of poor women due to economic inequality - women cannot claim the right to reproductive 'labour' and fair compensation - is not a natural but a social phenomenon, affecting even Foucault's bio-politics on population control. Foucault referred to the form of power exercised over individuals who are considered to be living beings as 'bio-power' and analyzed the politics of the government that controls the population through bio-power as micro-physics of power. The bio-politics of government today follows the rule-centered rationality of governance along with the Panopticon discipline system. Each draft of the Maternal and Child Health Act the Korean government and the National Assembly proposed after the decision on the Crimes of Abortion nonconforming to the Korean Constitution supports Foucault's analysis. However, Foucault's bio-power overlooked the male bias in technology. Pregnant women are degenerating into so-called 'orphans in the medical world', and women are not able to play an independent role as owners of technology. A policy that completely excludes women's "agency" is discriminatory and can even harm the unborn child. The patriarchy of governing power that cannot guarantee women's reproductive rights is the limitation of Foucault's bio-politics that overlooked the patriarchy.