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The "A" Word: Women's Abortion Experiences In Georgia, Kendra J. Cooper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abortion is a common medical procedure, with twenty-one percent of all American pregnancies ending in induced abortion in 2011. Literature shows that abortion is highly stigmatized in the United States and even more so in the American South. The contentious discourse surrounding the moral and ethical viewpoints, “right” versus “wrong,” often overpowers women’s lived experiences. Although abortion has been studied extensively across multiple disciplines, literature on women’s lived experiences is limited. Previous research has focused on women in the Midwest, West, and Northeastern regions of the United States but the South has not been a significant focus of study. The …

Informed Consent, Abortion, And Reproductive Autonomy, Heather Dawn Lakey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abortion is an inimitable experience that poses a host of unique ethical and philosophical questions not generated by other medical procedures. In spite of a massive amount of literature discussing abortion, there is little theoretical work examining the relationship between abortion and informed consent. This is a problematic oversight because informed consent plays a prominent role in contemporary abortion practices. In an effort to address this lacuna, my dissertation explores the concept of informed consent as it functions within abortion discourse.

Informed consent and abortion are both interdisciplinary terms and thus a robust critique of their intersection requires an interdisciplinary …