Abortion and the struggle to be good in the 1970s

This study used social science methodology to illuminate an important clinical question that had been inaccessible to researchers until the 1970s. The question was what effect did an abortion have on normally rule abiding women. Abortion had been presumed to be illegal until a judicial decision in 1969. In 1972 Australia's first abortion clinic was established, and the participants in this study were the women who attended it in 1974. This study was the first of its kind in Australia.

Interviews were conducted with 32 women who had a lawful termination of pregnancy and who agreed to be interviewed one year later. 84% of women agreed to follow-up contact, and 34 were contacted. Social science theory about deviance, social stigma and norm violation was used to inform the study.

Single, nulliparous women, were troubled by the potential exposure of their rule breaking sexual activity. The abortion was in part an action taken to preserve their persona as competent, moral beings capable of taking care of themselves. The abortion was the sensible next step in managing a missed menstrual period, the back up when contraception or plans for love and marriage failed. These women took mothering seriously and had an abortion to avoid becoming inadequate mothers. Abortion was a challenge to the married women's sense of themselves as good mothers, and their motives related to good mothering. The working class women had histories of managing tough and challenging life events, and they used the strengths, skills and networks they had established and applied those to the abortion decision.

The most important and frequent effect of abortion was to make women feel more competent in managing their lives. The skills required to locate and access an abortion clinic against a backdrop of general social disapproval, expanded their sense of themselves as actors in their own lives. Their stories, as well as networks of support, enabled them to integrate abortion into their sense of themselves as good women.