Women's Role in Decision Making in Abortion: Profiles from Rural Maharashtra

Abstract

This paper presents a part of the qualitative exploratory study conducted in rural Maharashtra from April 1994 to April 1996 to understand the issue of abortion from women's perspective. The paper explores the decision making process in abortion and the factors that affect this process in the overall context of women's lives. Four important landmarks in a woman's life have been used as indicators to assess women's role in decision making. Profiles of women and men, collected through case studies, interviews and observation have been presented here to represent the various situations in which abortion was conducted, namely as a method of family planning, following foetal sex determination or when there was a risk to the woman's life. Some women who have undergone natural abortions have also been included to give an understanding of the family's attitude towards the woman during an abortion. The paper highlights the fact the process of decision making involves not only the couple in question, but the larger family, also. Multiple factors intervene during the decision making phase, making the process dynamic and situation-specific. The ethical and practical dilemmas that men and
women go through during the process are also ignored.