Making Meaning of Women Who Have Late-Term Abortions from the Perspective of Mothers Who Terminated Wanted Pregnancies

Abstract

Women who have late-term abortions not only have to cope with losing a child but also the stigma associated with termination. Understanding the ways stigmatizing ideologies are resisted by alternatives has the potential to disrupt meanings that disenfranchise populations. Interested in ideological resistance, we framed this study in relational dialectics theory, which highlights how marginalized discourses resist dominant ones to make meaning of a semantic object. We used RDT’s corresponding method, contrapuntal analysis, which revealed two discourses that competed to illuminate the meanings of women who terminate wanted pregnancies due to health complications (WTHC): the Discourse of Independent Murder (DIM) and the Discourse of Collective Sacrifice (DCS). These discourses interplayed through contractive practices (i.e., disqualification, naturalization, ideal violation), synchronic interplay (i.e., entertaining, countering, negating), and dialogic transformation (i.e., hybridization and aesthetic moment) illustrating a struggle that both reified and resisted the DIM. Theoretical implications and practical applications are discussed.