Rebecca Kukla explores Autonomy and the Negotiation of Reproductive Health Information
Rebecca Kukla explores Autonomy and the Negotiation of Reproductive Health Information
SSHRC Grant 2006 – Research Profile
Rebecca Kukla, Department of Philosophy
Project Title: “Autonomy and the Negotiation of Reproductive Health Information”
Rebecca Kukla will study how reprooductive health information is communicated and disseminated.
Her project has three parts. The first consists of collaborative research with a team of feminist scholars, including two obstetricians, two philosophers, a medical anthropologist, a medical sociologist, and a decision scientist. They will examine how information about reproductive risk is collected and communicated, and how presentations of risk information shape women’s decision-making.
In the second part of her project , Kukla will research how women use the internet and other media in order to find and share reproductive health information, and the role that on-line communities play in shaping women’s understanding of their own bodies, reproductive narratives, and medical authority.
Finally, Kukla will ask how this new culture of information impedes, enhances, and changes the meaning of women’s reproductive autonomy.
“I began this project when I was a Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics and Health Policy at Johns Hopkins University. At Hopkins I was in a very interdisciplinary environment, working side by side with doctors, nurses, social scientists, legal theorists and others. My desire to study reproduction and women’s agency from an interdisciplinary perspective grew out of this experience.”