Aborto provocado: representações sociais de mulheres

Quantitative study based on the Theory of Social Representations. This piece of research aimed at analyzing contents and identifying structure of social representations of women on induced abortion. Subjects enrolled consisted of 147 women with abortion induced at a public maternity, Salvador, BA, Brazil. A free word association test was used in 2007. Data was analyzed on the EVOC-2000 software. The structure of the representations is supported by elements of the central nucleus and by those of the peripheral nucleus. The first ones qualify the abortion act (crime and sin), motivate action (courage and specificity of individual’s condition), and express consequences of the act (pain, regret, guilt, death, and sadness); and the peripheral elements are expressed as remedy, preconception, wickedness, weakness, anger, and difficulty. Health professionals can develop actions to reframe such representations, which result in illness to those women, and can think of strategies that assure judgment-free care.