Coping with fertility in Israel: a case study of culture clash.

Résumé

The concepts of culture-bound belief systems and explanatory models focused on reproduction and contraception are applied to a case of a married Jewish woman seeking to interrupt an unwanted pregnancy. Discrepancies between the lay belief system held by the woman, and the clinical belief system of the medical mediators of contraception and abortion, have created a situation where none of the alternatives at the woman's disposal seems correct: the options available for preventing pregnancy are unacceptable or inefficient; having a child is also not acceptable; and termination of unwanted pregnancy by abortion is ethically and morally wrong. The "no-win" situation results from medical ethnocentrism and failure to interpret the context of meanings and norms within which health decisions are constructed.