| dc.description.abstract | Reproductive health(care) is a contentious issue, one that has been historically barred, limited, and regulated across the United States. Broadly defined, reproductive health is a state of well-being related to the reproductive systems, and reproductive healthcare is a spectrum of methods, resources, and services that contribute to the state of well-being related to the reproductive systems. However, reproductive health(care) can mean many things across different organizational contexts: justice, human health(care), women’s health(care), rights, autonomy, choice. Ultimately, it is through the competing voices of the conversational gatekeepers of reproductive health(care) where can begin to recognize the messiness of what reproductive health(care) actually is.
The primary goal of this dissertation is to theorize who or what invokes and expresses the social realities of reproductive health(care) from an organizational communication perspective. Using the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) framework, I set out to explore how reproductive health(care) is communicatively constituted through language, member identification, and sites. I did this by employing two methodologies: (1) semi-structured interviews and (2) intimate mapping. Collectively, the findings of this study showed that reproductive health(care) is not a solid, tangible entity. Rather, it is a vibrating assemblage of tension and conflict produced through discourse, member identification, and sites of affective, embodied experience.
This dissertation aims to bring awareness to how reproductive health(care) is constituted by organizations and organizational members that claim to support it. This project also begins to provide a foundation for organizations that maintain disparate understandings of reproductive health(care) to break out of binaries (e.g., pro-life/pro-choice) and embrace the messiness that constitutes reproductive health(care). The findings of this dissertation also offer several practical implications for organizations and organizational members that not only do reproductive-related work, but also for those who craft policy, legislation, and contribute to the various conversations that affect and constrain reproductive health(care). | en |
