It’s Not an Abortion: Examining How Individuals Who End a Wanted Pregnancy Discuss their Experiences

Abstract

Various scholars have concluded that narratives of individuals who have ended wanted pregnancies restrict abortion to only acceptable cases. Through the analysis of 33 personal narratives posted on the website “Ending a Wanted Pregnancy,” this article argues that these stories are polysemous, exhibiting hermeneutic depth. Women telling these stories construct reproductive justice and anti-abortion meanings simultaneously, which creates a new meaning in which their terminations are not abortions and removes them from the abortion dichotomy. These narratives achieve this distinction through the construction of a termination narrative and by distinguishing themselves from women who (do not) have abortions.

Keywords:

• Abortion
• debate
• late-term abortions
• rhetorical criticism

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Leah Ceccarelli for her detailed feedback during the construction of this manuscript. This project began in her Rhetorical Criticism class and she continued reading my drafts after the course concluded

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Although non-binary individuals and trans men can be pregnant, throughout this paper, I use terms such as “maternal” and “women” because these are the terms most often used in public debate.

Additional information

Funding

There are no conflicts of interest or funding sources to report. This research was exempted by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Washington. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Cimmiaron F. Alvarez, 4 Huntington St. New Brunswick, NJ, 08901. Email: [email protected].

Notes on contributors

Cimmiaron F. Alvarez

Cimmiaron F. Alvarez (M.A., University of Washington) is a Ph.D. student in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. Her research interest lies at the intersection of interpersonal, family, and health communication. Specifically, she is focused on impression management and coping during difficult transitions.