Türkiye'de Kürtaj: Gebelik kaybı sürecine doğum-teşvik politikaları ve sağlık çalışanları üzerinden bakmak

This thesis aims to explore women's voluntary and involuntary abortion experiences in Turkey. Based on participant observation in a private clinic for over six months and 13 interviews with medical professionals and women who experienced spontaneous abortion, this study aims to shed light on the political and social factors that inform pregnancy loss process. To reveal the political factors, I analyse the population policies, legal amendments on reproduction in Turkey, and pronatal discourses of Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) in contemporary Turkey. In addition to this, I explore how medical professionals' ethical approach towards abortion inform this process. Although legal code in Turkey allows women to have voluntary abortion in ten weeks of gestation, a great majority of the clinicians avoid performing voluntary abortion because of their moral stance towards abortion. Therefore, secondly, through an ethnographic research in a private hospital, I investigate how personal position of the obstetricians, delivery midwives and nurses can inform their medical practices. Lastly, I analyse women's narratives of pregnancy loss, their perceptions on motherhood and reproduction, and their relations with their bodies during post-pregnancy loss period.