Examining Infertility’s Stigma on Women’s Desire to Reproduce and How Different Medical Spaces Influence Their Responses to Privacy Invasion

• Main Authors: WU CHING PEI, 吳青沛
• Other Authors: 吳齊殷
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/31164871685704549541

碩士 === 臺北醫學大學 === 醫學研究所 === 93 === The study took 165 infertile women from three hospitals with reproductive medical center approved by Department of Health in Taiwan as participants, and the main purpose of this research was to investigate their bearing attitude toward stigma of infertility and response to privacy invasion in medical spaces. There were few studies focusing on the stigma of infertility and privacy invasion in hospital in Taiwan, and most of the conclusions were based on qualitative analysis. The study therefore made a difference from the past ones by combining qualitative results with quantitative findings for richer conclusions. After evaluating on research scales, 12 subjects volunteered for deeper interviews. Several conclusions were as follows: Firstly, the quantitative analysis revealed an important finding that the stigma of infertility indeed made women a strong will of bearing, which was because of getting pregnant and having a baby was the only way to get rid of the stigma on them. For this reason, these women were eager to see doctors and tried hard for other treatments to get pregnant and to have a baby. Moreover, infertile women depreciated themselves, felt “losing face” to see a doctor and reduced the stigmatic attribute by strategies such as controlling information. Furthermore, most of them felt uncomfortable when their privacy was invested in medical spaces, though many of them kept going to hospital for the doctor. Except the strong will of bearing, the attribute of infertility and the differences of clinics supported them for going on treatments. Take reproductive medical clinic as an example, outpatients here were all infertile women, for the same treatment reason, they could easier lower their feeling of stigma and privacy invasion. Key Words: Infertility, stigma, medical spaces, privacy invasion.