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Notes
This claim is based on the fact that in western liberal societies there are currently morally unjustifiable differences in legal and medical assessments of women’s consent-making capacities depending on their cultural background, where women from marginalised groups are often assessed as less capable of giving informed consent than women from dominant groups [4,5,6,7,8,9,10].
There is not enough space to provide a lengthy explanation of what counts as medically necessary/unnecessary—and it is almost certain that there will be disagreement within the medical community. But I should state for clarity regarding my position in the relevant debate, that I would include terminating an unwanted underage pregnancy as “medically necessary care” [23].
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KGT would like to thank Max Buckler for his engagement with the work, and the journal editors for the opportunity to reply.
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Townsend, K.G. On becoming autonomous and “coercive cultural acts”: a reply to Max Buckler. Int J Impot Res 35, 35–37 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41443-022-00617-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41443-022-00617-w
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