CONSTRUCTING WOMENS PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH IN ANTIABORTION RHETORIC

This paper considers the ways in which anti-abortion activists constru ct women's psychological experience of abortion and explores the rheto rical significance of this discourse in advancing the anti-abortion pr oject. In particular we examine how the psychological concept of 'deni al' contained in the (proposed) diagnostic category of 'Post-Abortion Syndrome' allows anti-abortionists to 'psychologise' and therefore und ermine alternative constructions of the experience of abortion. Furthe r, we explore how this construction of women's experience allows parti cular constructions of the foetus (ie, 'unborn child') to be advanced (and naturalised) without reference to overtly political argumentation . The significance of this development of the abortion debate and its implications for the dynamics of political mobilisation are discussed.