Roe V. Gilligan Abortion Analysis

Summary:
• “Listening to women’s voices clarified the ethic of care, not because care is essentially associated with women of a part of women’s nature, but because women for a combination of psychological and political reasons voiced relational realities that were otherwise unspoken or dismissed as inconsequential.” pg. 149 o Women’s voices and experiences are important, hear the differences of women’s lives in comparison to men.
• “ Metaphors of voice and hearing… draw attention to human connection – to the relationship between speaker and listener, to the possibility of different language, and thus to the potential for misunderstanding and mistranslation as well as to the ability of people to see and to speak about themselves and the world

http://www.healthofchildren.com/M/Moral-Development.html
• Gilligan has deepened our understanding of moral development and what it means to be fully human.
• During the late 1960s, student protests focused on the consequences of social inequality and spoke out against unfairness. o Roe v. Wade: abortion legalized, it is a protected right like free speech.
• Gilligan notes that it is important to view and understand male and female views of historical events in order to fully comprehend what happened and how it was interpreted.
• Gilligan witnesses an increase in teen suicide, educational problems, and illegal activity, providing further evidence that new directions in psychological theory and practice were needed.
• Language used to describe relationships was filled with “strategic images of separation,” which attempted to classify, categorize, and ultimately predict and control human behavior. o Language, which is male oriented controls how people communicate and how the world perceived (perceived as

153
• Gilligan knew that she could not rely on traditional research methods and data analysis techniques when trying to get women’s voices heard.
• Gilligan and her associates created ‘a voice-centered, relational method of doing psychological research,’
• They used an interviewing approach, ‘responsive to the harmonies of psychic life, the nonlinear, recursive, nontransparent play, interplay and orchestrations of feelings and thoughts, the polyphonic nature of any utterance, and the symbolic nature not only of what is said but also of what is not said.” pgs. 153-154 o Deeper, more meaningful analysis.
• Gilligan relied on the process of storytelling because the process allows the storyteller to continually locate and relocate one’s voice within a social and cultural context.
• Gilligan reminds us that choice making and one’s willingness to accept responsibility for one’s choices is the essence of moral decision