Women's experience of abortion in Aotearoa/New Zealand : conflicts and contradictions in choice : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment for the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
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2014
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Massey University
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"No woman wants an abortion like she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She
wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg."
— Anonymous
Contemporary constructions of abortion in New Zealand have limited abortion
rhetoric to a distinct binary of prochoice or prolife discourse. These binaries restrict
the positions available to women when negotiating their experiences of abortion, and
position women in a polarising discourse that does not sufficiently encompass the
complexity of women’s lived experience of abortion. Limiting abortion rhetoric to the
dominant binary has consequences for the creation and maintenance of abortion
stigma, particularly internalised stigma, which can have negative consequences on
women’s experience. This research aimed to examine the gap that psychological
research has failed to explore by addressing the question of the effects of wider
sociocultural factors in women’s experience of abortion and the discourses that they
engaged with to construct their narratives. Five women who had terminated a
pregnancy before 20 weeks gestation were interviewed about their abortion
experience in New Zealand using one to one conversational interviews. A feminist
poststructuralist discourse analysis was conducted, attending to the binary that
enabled and limited positions for women to occupy in regards to the wider
sociocultural forces regulating abortion. The analysis showed that the binary both
created and exacerbated women’s struggle and confusion in their decision-making
with the inflexibility of positions on either side of abortion rhetoric. It explored how
women position themselves as ‘both/and’ within the binary rather than ‘either/or’ and
identified some of the conflicts this creates. Further alternative discourses of
maternity, individualism and female sexuality textured the prochoice and prolife
abortion rhetoric and enabled an examination of how other discourses regulating
women’s bodies are salient in women’s talk about their abortions. This research
provides an understanding of the effects of dominant abortion discourses and the
power relations implicit in them on women’s construction of their experience.
Furthermore, how these discourses may be resisted and implications for policy going
forward are also examined to reduce stigma and silence surrounding abortion for
women in New Zealand and improve the social conditions in which women access
this procedure.