This study phenomenologically explores the self-narratives of female with the experience of termination of pregnancy by focusing on those practicing within Catholicism, which has been most stubbornly opposing the issue of abortion the Korean society. ...
This study phenomenologically explores the self-narratives of female with the experience of termination of pregnancy by focusing on those practicing within Catholicism, which has been most stubbornly opposing the issue of abortion the Korean society. As the female who experienced abortion struggled to not lose their faith, it was shown in detail how the event of abortion and the identity of the believer collide, compete, and coordinate between the two.
For this purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 Korean Catholic female who had the experience of abortion as main research participants.
Pregnancy, which they unexpectedly experienced at some point in their lives, and the experience of stopping it became a decisive event that brought them into a conflict with the norms and values that their religion strongly emphasize. To them, abortion is being described as an experience that made their religious life very difficult, but also that forced them to deepen their faith as a result.
First, most of the research participants experienced abortion after facing an unintended pregnancy as a result of contraceptive failure. However, there are the influence of a Catholic doctrine against artificial contraception as well as the abortion itself. Mainly, married female were continuously educated on an uncertain contraceptive method in the Catholic Church and faced pregnancy as a result of practicing it.
Female Catholics who experienced abortion continue to be exposed to their religious culture even after the abortion, and their private wounds continue to be irritated and worsened in a religious environment that discusses “abortion” only in a way of scolding it. Because of this, the healing and recovery of wounds became more difficult, and they turned away from church activities as a result.
However, for the women who participated in the study, abortion was an experience that served as a milestone in establishing a personal perspective of faith centered on prayer and meditation. While facing the contradiction between the actual “experience” of abortion and the religious “value” to follow, they have a narrative of their journey of faith in struggling to find their own religious place and direction. Although they did have a clear solution as to whether the message of the Catholic Church against abortion and the one incident that they actually experienced could coexist on the same line, they did not give up their faith or facing their own experience. Rather than relying on the guidance of the clergy and ascetic, they focused on personal spiritual training and prayers. In the end, they tried to build a deep one-on-one relationship with God, established a personal life style of faith, and tried to lead their lives in a better direction and for a better image through these efforts. In the process of such struggles, a deeper understanding both of God and of life and love was possible.
This study is significant as the first study in Korea to discover and to analyze the meaning of life experiences that lie in the strict blind spot between the social and academic discourses on abortion of women of Catholic faith. In the world after the abolition of the ban on abortion, with the social atmosphere in which religious worries about abortion can be seen as a grappling with a problem that is no longer significant, and the religious discourse that defines a person who commits abortion as a murderer still intact, a new story in between was verbalized and submitted to the discourse.
Through these, it was examined how fragile the old dichotomous structure of “fetal life versus women's choice” was around the issue of abortion. The lives of individual women who struggled to exercise their subjectivity over their bodies and to integrate it with their beliefs while holding a sense of guilt and responsibility have acquired a tangible language and meaning.