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Exploring ‘Empowerment’ and ‘Agency’ in Ronald Dworkin’s Theory of Rights: A Study of Women’s Abortion Rights in India

Contemporary discourse in liberal theory is preoccupied with two concerns: first, the identification of secular and moral foundational principles that could guide political structures, independent of any conception of the good life or community goals (Plant, 1991); and second, determination of the nature of political institutions (Sen, 2001, p. 148) that could give maximum freedom to individuals to pursue their life goals for reasons they value. These concerns emerged as a response to a persistent paradox in liberal theory. It is that in spite of its all ‘inclusive’ paradigm that incorporates each individual’s freedom to pursue goals irrespective of social identities it adheres to a formal notion of equality leading to exclusion at structural and institutional levels in social/political/and economic spheres, in invariably all societies. The exclusion has been manifested in three main areas: distribution of resources/opportunities/information in society, participation in crucial stages of the political process like decision-making, and gender issues. This exclusion has been more apparent in the case of historically oppressed groups (the largest being women) such as cultural/religious minorities, homosexuals, immigrants and backward classes. To understand and resolve this paradox, it is necessary to unfold the underlying foundations of liberal theory. In recent years, unlike non-liberal thinkers such as communitarians, socialists and cultural relativists who have rejected the discourse due to its paradoxical nature, different liberal political theorists have extensively engaged in resolving this paradox such as John Rawls, J. Waldron, Gewirth, Ackerman, the ‘best known’ among them being Ronald Dworkin.