During interviews with self-identified feminists (n=27), respondents express discomfort when their abortion experiences fail to match perceived expectations from the pro-choice movement. They describe a “feminist abortion experience” as eliciting a sense of relief, empowerment, and detachment. An “anti-feminist abortion,” on the other hand, involves sadness, ambivalence, and a high attachment to the pregnancy. Respondents not only self-police this boundary but also perform emotion work to change an undesirable emotional state. First, I ask how pro-choice norms and constructed and perpetuated? I find that people learn what is expected of them from the contents of pro-choice discourse and learn about undesirable emotions from their absence in pro-choice discourse. Second, I ask how feminists manage discrepancies between these perceived expectations (how they believe they “should” feel) and their actual experiences. In particular, what motivates them to change their feeling states in the event of such a discrepancy? Extending Arlie Hochschild’s feeling rules framework (1979), I argue that because of respondents’ personal and collective identities as feminists, they feel obligated to other people in the movement to have the “right kind of abortion.” Whereas the feeling rules framework suggests that people perform emotion work to achieve an ideal feeling state, I argue that they also work to avoid stigmatized emotions. Lastly, I hypothesize that personal and collective identities might also explain emotion work in other social movement contexts. When a movement politicizes and promotes certain emotions, members will feel obligated to match these norms.

Recent directions in organizational studies have demonstrated progressive social movements' ability to generate rewarding enterprises or environmental opportunity structures (EOS) in receptive markets. However, more nuanced opposing movements (Meyer and Staggenborg 1996), such as the pro-choice and pro-life movements, receive far less attention, leaving scholars to postulate that there is much yet to know about the impact of movements other than those with strict progressive orientations (Zald, Morrill, and Rao 2005). To better understand how opposing movements contribute to environmental opportunity structures, this thesis examines dramatic growth in the number of adoption agencies advertising services in the Yellow Pages during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Some suggest the growth may be due to changing attitudes and laws regulating interracial adoption, the growing acceptance of international adoption as a family formation strategy, and the success of the adoptee rights movement. However, I argue that at least some of this growth is related to changes in abortion laws associated with the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision and associated pro-choice and pro-life opposing movements that dominated public debate during the same period. Applying cultural entrepreneurship and competitive framing, I demonstrate that pro-choice language is adopted by adoption agencies that compete with abortion clinics as they offer services to birth mothers. Opposing movement features are evident in organization growth patterns, the services offered, and the slogans used. Dissecting the adoption services field into generalist and specialist organizational forms, I find that specialists experienced precipitous growth and were more likely to make use of certain "choice" frames, co-opted from the pro-choice movement and redirected to support pro-life ideologies. Further, I find that "open adoption" services, championed by the adoptee advocacy community for their identity-affirming and sustained relationship-allowing practices, are most often marketed by the adoption provider as a choice-granting process, giving adoption providers further opportunity to mirror the pro-choice movement's choice-centric practices. Because adoption agencies' growth, slogans, and services are largely bound up in tactics specific to the pro-choice and pro-life opposing movement dynamics, I conclude that opposing movements can indeed contribute to environmental opportunity structures for market growth.

Since the ruling of Roe v. Wade in 1973, controversy in regards to its acceptance in the U.S. remains prevalent politically and socially as opponents of abortion “pro-life” has adopted a strategy of “legal but inaccessible” that has resulted in the passage of several state laws since its establishment. This research project examines relationship between the level of support for abortion policy in the U.S. and some factors namely; Gender, Religious background, and Political ideology by drawing from an online-survey of 100 university students in the U.S. Also, it examines the difference in abortion rates among U.S. states that are governed by republican or democratic governors using abortion rate data of all 50 U.S. states including the District of Columbia for the year 2015 sourced from Abortion statistics and other data. Two statistical techniques were employed and they include: Chi-Square test and Independent sample T-test. Results from the chi-square tests support the null hypothesis that there is no relationship between the support for abortion policy and gender, religious background, and political ideology. Also, from the T-test result, we found that there is no significant difference in abortion rates among U.S. states that are governed by republican or democratic governors. Findings based on the trend analysis of annual U.S. abortion from 1973-2015 shows that the reported annual abortion in the U.S. is on a continuous decrease since the 1990s even though abortion has been legalized in all U.S. states.

This diploma thesis entitled "Social Pro-choice movement in Ireland and Switzerland" aims to gain insight into Pro-choice organizations as a social movement in the Republic of Ireland and Switzerland. At first I tried to define what I actually mean by term "pro-choice". I also outlined some of the definitions of social movements and theories that deal with social movements and give an insight into their research. The next chapter is already devoted to the Ireland. Here I present a brief history of the republic, political system, economy, language, religion, and especially the history of the abortion law. In the next subsection about Pro-choice organizations I am writing about the creation and development of Pro-choice organizations in this country. And finally there is also the research part of this work, which is focusing on the frame analysis of the leaflets. The third chapter focuses on Switzerland. In this section are the same chapters focused on the history, politics, economics, language, religion, history, abortion law history, Pro- choice organizations history and the frame analysis. In the last chapter, I compared these two countries from the point of view of the frame analysis, their success and I could not ignore the political and cultural system. Key words: social movement, Pro-choice,...

Although there is a growing international consensus of adopting progressive abortion laws, we also see a backlash of reproductive health regulation across the globe, for example in Poland. In contrast to the existing literature on abortion in Poland, this thesis explores pro-choice advocates’ strategies in relation to their oppositional forces. To do so, pro-choice activities surrounding the near-total ban of abortion in 2020 and 2021 are studied through interpretative content analysis of pro-choice advocates’ websites, one Annual Report, and interviews with pro-choice advocates. Using previous research on how to capture resistance and well-grounded concept deriving from social movement theory, this study establishes how the strategies of pro- choice advocates are affected by their oppositional forces. The analysis showcases that the pro- choice advocates perceive Poland as a hub for far-right and conservative groups, and establishes that they are aware of the resistance they meet, including their maneuver possibilities and limitations in the political and institutional context. Pro-choice advocates need to expand their services and use alternative strategies to circumvent oppositional forces’ actions and power. Due to the due to the impact of oppositional forces, the resources of rest, good relationships within one’s group, and the networks of these groups, i.e., the emotional dynamics of their strategies, to be crucial. Correspondingly, due to the oppositional forces’ actions, smaller pro-choice groups are found to a greater extent using reactive tactics than proactive. The dynamics of power, including the institutional context, are in favor of pro-choice advocates’ oppositional forces, however, this thesis also acknowledges how innovative and problem-solving pro-choice advocates are, although being led down by their government and the society in which they work. As such, this study brings valuable insights to supplement the existing theoretical knowledge concerning feminist movements’ resistance and oppositional dynamics in a case of gender-inequitable change.

Despite the fact that one in three women of reproductive age will have an abortion there continues to be stigma surrounding those who have had abortions. Abortion stigma continues to permeate how women are treated and services are provided. The present study explores the ways in which women use the online social networking site Twitter to engage with the #ShoutYourAbortion hashtag to resist dominant pro-life discourses of abortion and challenge abortion stigma. Through the use of a critical discourse analysis that utilizes feminist standpoint theory, four major discourses were identified as emerging out of the #ShoutYourAbortion hashtag. First, the discourse of resisting and challenging pro-life rhetoric emerged in that women utilized the hashtag to challenge dominant discourses on abortions by sharing their own experiences that contradict pro-life narratives. Second, the discourse of emphasizing the importance of choice and autonomy regarding women’s reproductive rights and freedoms was highlighted, and the importance of abortion as a form of healthcare was emphasized. Next, women used discourses that aimed to critique and challenge the abortion industry as a whole. Lastly, women used the hashtag to normalize abortions in an attempt to challenge abortion stigma. This exploratory research provides insights into the utility of engaging with hashtags to resist and challenge dominant discourses, and how women are sharing their experiences in an attempt to change the narratives around abortion. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

The abortion debate in the United States has come to split the contemporary electorate among party lines. Since the late 1970s, the Republican Party has taken a stand against abortion and has worked through various routes of legislation to pass restrictions on access to the procedure. Oregon however, provides a different interpretation of this partisan debate. Though Oregon has seen both Republican and Democratic leadership in all houses of state government and pro-life conservative groups have lobbied to restrict the procedure, no abortion restriction has been passed in the state since the United States Supreme Court invalidated many state abortion bans in 1973. This thesis analyzes the legislative history of Oregon beginning in the mid nineteenth century, when the Oregon Territory first passed an abortion ban. Oregon voters and lawmakers alike were continuously asked to debate the legality and morality of abortion. Though the state did participate in the national debate over access to abortion, made clear by dozens of attempts at restricting the procedure, Oregon's response to conservative political trends is distinctive. Oregon liberalized its abortion law before Roe was decided; and years before, prominent physicians provided abortions and advocated for reproductive health. After abortion was decriminalized, Oregon legislators protected abortion access further by rejecting all attempts to pass abortion restrictions and crafting legislation to make further restrictions more difficult to pass. Even as Republicans gained majorities in the Oregon legislature in the late 1980s and 1990s and the pro-life movement gained momentum on the statewide level nationally, Republican lawmakers remained unwilling to prioritize abortion legislation. So too, in the decades following the Roe decision, Oregon voters have rejected all pro-life attempts to restrict abortion access by ballot initiative. Instead of pointing to one explanation for Oregon's protection of abortion access, this thesis examines the societal and legislative developments that worked in tandem to create a legislative landscape that is protective of abortion.

Healthy Women, Healthy Families is a survey collection and story sharing project spearheaded by NARAL Pro Choice Texas. The reproductive justice based project asks survey respondents to rate how urgently their community needs a variety of health care services. While all Texas women are invited to participate, special attention was paid to targeting low income and minority women. In this report, I analyze the survey data and make both policy and internal recommendations for NPCT. Overall the survey results show that while all of the services in question are needed by women in Texas, there are differences in the strength of this need based on race and income. General health care services were most valued by all demographics, but NARAL’s priority services were valued most by upper class white women, while low income and minority women were more likely to support services aimed at specific populations (non-English speakers, women in prison, undocumented immigrants, those without transportation, etc.). Based on these survey results, I recommend that NARAL conduct follow up surveys as a way of illuminating some still unanswered questions. In addition, I recommend that NARAL reach out to coalition partners who advocate for the most needed services, expand outreach into low income and minority communities, and use outreach and messaging to try and frame NARAL’s services in a larger, more general health care context. / text

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This thesis is analysing the abortion debate in Bolivia and questions a supposed contradiction of being simultaneouslyfeminist and Catholicregarding opinions on abortion. By analysing texts from three important actors in the abortion debate in Bolivia, the studyshows on what arguments and discourses that are used within the debate, as well asconsideringthe interesting role of Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir (CDD -Catholics for the Right to Decide),that isa feminist organisation fighting for a complete decriminalisation of abortion in Bolivia, but are also Catholics. The two other actors analysed are Colectivo Rebeldía as a representative of the feminist movement, and the Catholic Church asthe greatest abortion opponent. The thesis has a feminist perspective and use a critical discourse analysis in orderto provide different perspectives on the abortion debate in Bolivia. The results indicate that the rights discourse is frequently used by all three actors, although promoting different rights.Whereas the Church promotes the foetus’ right to life, the twofeminist organisations speak of rights in terms of a woman’s right to decide.The Church is using a conservative traditional language and aims to maintain status quo, whereas the feminist organisations use a variety of discourses with the objective of social transformation. Moreover, the fact that the organisation CDD is both feminist and Catholic, might not seem that contradictive when explainedwith the help of feminist theology.