Caesarean section practices in the context of women's informed consent: A bioethical evaluation

The thesis was planned based on the assumption that there are problems in Turkey in obtaining informed consent before cesarean section procedures. This thesis aims to produce information on whether women are autonomous in their choice of mode of delivery within the framework of the methodological knowledge of both the discipline of bioethics and feminist studies. For this purpose, the concepts of bioethics, biopolitics, biopower and medicalization were tried to be explained. In this context, within the scope of the thesis, the ethical problems encountered regarding the method of applying informed consent before cesarean delivery were identified and suggestions for their solution were presented. The general aim of the research is to evaluate the concept of informed consent in the context of bioethics in cesarean section practices in Turkey. In this study, it was aimed to determine the scope of the information, the effect of the information on the birth process, and whether the basic components of informed consent were included in the information provided before cesarean section procedures. In order to achieve the aim of the study, qualitative field research was conducted, and the participants' reasons for preferring cesarean section, their thoughts on cesarean section, decision-making mechanism and value discourses on informed consent in cesarean section were obtained through in-depth interviews using a prepared questionnaire. Questions supporting each other were prepared under each category. The data obtained from in-depth interviews were evaluated by thematic analysis method. The value discourses that came to the fore in the interviews were divided into context, main theme and sub-themes. When the fieldwork of the qualitative research was completed, important information was obtained on the implementation procedure of informed consent before cesarean section.