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The Intimate Trial: Couple Interactions during Premarital Abortion in North China

Sat, August 12, 8:30 to 10:10am, Palais des congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 510D

Abstract

Previous researches often overlook the dynamics of the actual interactions between intimate couple in the course of premarital abortion. Based on 62 in-depth interviews with women who have experienced premarital abortion in Shandong, China, this study tries to show the interplay of abortion and intimacy by explicating the complexity of couple interactions during the course of abortion. The paper demonstrates how women expect, perceive, interpret and respond to their male partners’ actions, and analyzing how these interactions may, in turn, reshape the relationships. Conceptualizing abortion as the “intimate trial” of romantic relationships, the paper depicts five major events that generate multiple meanings and interactions during an abortion: the immediate reaction to pregnancy, decision-making, medical assistance, care-taking and financial contribution. Based upon the women’s narrations and the author’s first-hand observation, the paper reflects the autonomy of the aborting women exercised through making reproductive and relational decisions, it also reifies the collaborative role of men during abortion. The paper not only reveals the interplay of abortion and intimacy by showing how prevailing gender ideologies and courtship norms had permeated couple interactions, it also mirrors the broad changes in youth sexual and dating culture and the reconfiguration of gender relationships under vast socio-economic restructuring in contemporary China.

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