Wombs: A Creative Fiction Exploration of Childfreedom
Date
2023-08-24
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Abstract
Wombs is a work of fiction in the form of fragmented vignettes. The work presents the life of a childfree woman, Jessa, and how her choice to not reproduce affects the relationships in her life – romantic, platonic, and familial. My intention behind this thesis is to present and represent the validity of childfree women. Grounded in fictional realism, my imagined world, opens with an at-home abortion and presents discussions of abortion and abortion health care throughout the manuscript. These sections stem, in part, from the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade and its subsequent effect on Canadian women through Conservative MP Cathay Wagantall's Bill C-311. The novella is set in Canada's present day, where abortion care is available nationwide. The manuscript also invokes a deliberate fragmented structure which illustrates how childfreedom does not fall into the confines of traditional storytelling, and through extension, society's constructions of the nuclear family. My manuscript occupies the space outside of these carefully constructed lines. The subsequent exegesis contextualizes abortion, the validity of childfreedom and the role of mothers and mothering in nature and within (and outside of) ideological scripts. My hope is that this work challenges the idea of the non-mother as lacking, implements childbearing as a conscious decision, and champions abortion rights as human rights.
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Keywords
childfreedom, reproductive rights, abortion, women's rights, fiction
Citation
Dowdy, M. (2023). Wombs: a creative fiction exploration of childfreedom (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.