Student Research & Publications - Faculty of Nursing

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    Women’s Narratives of Termination of Pregnancy for Fetal Abnormality: Exploring the Moral Habitability of their Everyday Lives
    (2014-09) Rolfe, Debbie
    Prenatal screening and testing are standard practices in prenatal care in Ontario and remain morally contested practices. Women who receive a prenatal diagnosis are faced with a morally challenging decision; either they continue the pregnancy and preserve the life of the unborn, or they terminate the pregnancy to avoid undue suffering for the baby and possibly for themselves and their families. The thread that runs through the literature is that regardless of the woman’s choice, the process of diagnosis, choosing and initial aftermath involves suffering. The purpose of this study is to develop a better understanding of how these women’s everyday lives, values and relationships with themselves and important others may have changed through time as a result of living with their choice to terminate a pregnancy for fetal abnormality. Additionally the study aims to gain insight into the interrelationship between a woman’s private experience of terminating a pregnancy for fetal abnormality and what it may suggest about the social and moral environment of her community. Specifically, the research questions are: 1) How do women narrate their everyday lives following a termination of pregnancy for fetal abnormality? 2) What fosters or suppresses the moral habitability of women’s social and moral worlds? The ultimate goal of the study is to suggest ways to reduce the suffering of women who undergo this experience. The study will be informed by a feminist ethics theoretical perspective, focusing on Margaret Urban Walker’s work on an expressive collaborative model of moral inquiry. Using a qualitative feminist narrative inquiry, I will invite women who terminated their pregnancy for fetal abnormality within the past 2-20 years to share their stories of pregnancy, termination of pregnancy and their everyday lives in the intervening years. Feminist reflective equilibrium will inform the data analysis phase.