The Risks of Acknowledgment: Performing the Sex-Selection Identification and Abortion Debate

Abstract

This article focuses on the performance of an Indian feminist street play that addresses issues of sex-determination testing and sex-selection abortion. In my analysis, I explore the rhetorical competence these activists exhibit as they raise concerns about the ethics of discarding fetuses identified as female and struggle with the constraints of performing the absence of these girl fetuses, given feminist desires to simultaneously maintain the right to abortion and abolish sex-selection abortion. I also focus upon the critical appropriation of traditional women's folk culture to create a compelling feminist performance aesthetic. For activists and audience members, the performance of this counter-narrative holds the potential to open space and time for talk (as well as meaningful silence) that is personal, interpersonal, and significantly political.