Decision-Making and Abortion

A COMPARISON OF CULTURAL CONSTRAINTS ON THE ABILITY OF WOMEN TO MAKE DECISIONS ON ABORTION AMONG HISPANIC, MIDDLE EASTERN, AND SOUTHEAST ASIAN ETHNIC COMMUNITIES IN THE UNITED STATES

This research examines cultural constraints influencing decisions by women in relation to abortion. A focus of this examination is on such cultural constraints that apply to women who are members of specific ethnic population groups in the United States, with a special emphasis on women whose ethnic origins are Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian.

Culture may be described as the ideals, values, norms, and assumptions about life that are widely shared among a group of people. While these traits may not be apparent to persons outside the cultural group, the traits are integrated into all activities of the life of a person who is a member of the cultural group. Thus, these traits provide the basis for how decisions are made and problems are solved by persons who are members of the cultural group. Cultural traits are learned at both conscious and unconscious levels. The learning process begins during the early socialization process of a person when family and community members transmit the essential traits of the culture to help the child survive in society (Triandis 9).

Acceptable behavior within a cultural group is determined by norms, which are the unwritten rules of the culture that are transmitted through cultural rites, rituals, and sanction

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n in such circumstances is "tantamount to sentencing the future parents to a life of torture and torment, while sentencing the child, once born, to a less than complete life" (Blum 2711). One solution offered by some pro-life proponents is to prohibit genetic testing. "This approach appears designed to maximize the emotional harm to parents of new borns with serious genetic defects" (Blum 2711). Another societal development that affects the abortion issue is the legal emancipation of women in the United States. The majority of pro-life proponents are males. Many of these males are male activists who argue that a woman should not be able to obtain an abortion without the permission of the male sperm donor. To accept this position, however, is to return women to the status of chattels in which women are viewed as the property of their husbands (Anderson 579). This argument, however, carries great weight in the Christian fundamentalist religious sub-culture and among some ethnic groups present in the American population. In the United States, there is a broad cultural acceptance of abortion as an acceptable form of health care. The Roe v. Wade decision by the United States Supreme Court defined health as a state of complete

Category: Psychology - D