The Lived Experience of Teen Girls’ Abortion in Taiwan

Abstract

In-depth interviews about the experience after having an abortion were conducted with 20 teenage girls in Taiwan. Six themes emerged by using Colaizzi's phenomenological methodology: (a) returning to "normal" life as soon as possible, (b) seeking abortion resources, (c) neglecting post-abortion care, (d) disturbed by the fetus ghost, (e) concern about virginity loss and choices for future, and (f) re-examining relationships with partners. Teenage girls received tremendous social and moral pressure due to their traditional cultural and social environment when they went through the abortion experience. The study helps health professionals understand the experience of those girls.

Concealing emotions: nurses' experiences with induced abortion care

“…These are therapeutic and compensatory behaviours that can be healing (Moskowitz 2001). In Taiwan, people often use the temple as a counselling service (Lee et al 2014). Each time participants were involved in a new abortion case, they believed that there was a new foetus spirit (the foetus ghost), and thus, participants often went to the temple to worship and pray.…”

“…, Chiang , Lee et al . ). Although abortion rates have increased, there is little knowledge regarding the experiences of nurses working in the delivery room who are involved with induced abortion care.…”

“…For unplanned adolescent pregnancies, the abortion rate is 96% (Wang 2010). In Taiwan, several studies have addressed the ethical issues, abortion methods and women's experiences with abortion care (Lin et al 2011, Chiang 2013, Lee et al 2014. Although abortion rates have increased, there is little knowledge regarding the experiences of nurses working in the delivery room who are involved with induced abortion care.…”

Intersectional discourses of reproductive agency in the Philippines: A mixed methods analysis of classed constructions of pregnancy resolution

“…Previous scholarship on unplanned pregnancy, teenage motherhood, abortion, and reproductive agency also featured methodological limitations our study sought to overcome. The shift from quantitative to qualitative methods in much recent work did away with deterministic decision-making models (Kelly & Grant, 2007) in favor of contextualized views of women’s complex engagement with cultural discourses (Chiweshe et al, 2017; Ekstrand et al., 2009; Lee et al., 2014). Our methodological design preserves such idiographic nuance while also validating the identification of themes with numerical measures, quantifying consensus and contestation between plural discourses, and recovering statistical generalizability in analysis of systematic classed differences.…”

“…(2011) noted, a “second stigma” can attend the decision to terminate unplanned pregnancies. Such stigma can manifest in fears of moral retribution for women who believe they may be shirking societally imposed reproductive duties (Lee et al, 2014; Molek-Kozakowska & Wanke, 2019). However, as Izugbara et al.…”