The intersection of relational and cultural narratives: women's abortion experiences.

Although a great deal has been written on women's personal deliberations in deciding to have and seeking an abortion, little has been written on the experience of living with this decision or on the meanings an abortion generates in the context of a particular life. In this hermeneutic phenomenological study, 14 women aged 19-44 expressed a need for professionals and others to accept the reality of unplanned pregnancy and to acknowledge that the choice of abortion cannot be fully understood in isolation from women's other reproductive choices. Using a feminist analysis of the tensions and contradictions in the women's accounts, the authors explore the intersections between their experiences and the cultural narratives in which they are situated, in a search for new possibilities for women and new understandings of women's experience of abortion.