Reproductive freedom, including legal access to abortion, feminists insist, is a fundamental health issue for women. However, it is also the issue that has provoked the most opposition to the feminist struggle. The polarized debate epitomized in the abortion conflict, the author contends, is at least partly embedded in the nature and form of the discourse about abortion, which inadequately conceptualizes both pregnancy and women's decisions regarding unwanted pregnancy. Gilligan's paradigm of moral voices is used to explore the possibility of transforming this discourse.
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