Iris Lopez,
"Sterilization and the Ethics of Reproductive Technology: An Integral Approach"
(page 2 of 5)
Methodology
In undertaking this study it was important to use a method that would
reveal the richness of experience captured by the ethnographic approach
while making my findings more broadly generalizable (quantifiable) in
terms of class and ethnic comparisons. To do this I combined
participant observation, oral histories, and an in-depth survey of a
selected sample of the female population, based on a systematic listing
of the residents in the neighborhood (a census). Because this is a
longitudinal ethnographic investigation I interviewed women and
collected their oral histories at different phases of the study. In
1981 I compiled a master list of all of the residents in the
neighborhood by knocking on 880 apartment doors in one census tract with
the aid of several community women I trained. The goal of taking a
census was to compile a master list of Puerto Rican households and to
determine the total number of sterilized Puerto Rican women, 21 years of
age and older, living there. Out of a census track of 880 households
I chose a random survey sample size of 128 women because I thought that
number of women would enable me to include women from different parts of
the neighborhood and provide me, the sole researcher, with a manageable
number of women whom I could interview. In order to select the women
randomly I asked every third sterilized woman for an interview and every
eighth non-sterilized woman.[10]
After completing the survey of 128 women I continued to work with
five families. I collected oral histories from the mothers and
grandmothers in the same family (3 generations per family x 5
families = 15 women). I kept in touch with these families over a span
of 23 years and intermittently interviewed them. Between the years 2001
and 2002, I re-interviewed the mothers and grandmothers of all five
families that I had initially included in the survey. Between 2003 and
2004 I interviewed and collected oral histories from the women in the
granddaughters' generation who had now come of age.
The women I interviewed range in age from 24 to 92 (1981 and 2006).
The mothers' generation was born in an agrarian society but witnessed
the industrialization of Puerto Rico. With one exception they only had a
second or third grade level of education because they left school to
work and help their parents on farms and in the household. As children
some of them worked in the needlework industry and later in the garment
industry. Most of the women in the daughters' generation were born in New
York. They lived there when the city shifted from an industrial to a
service economy, and lived through the Civil Rights and Women's
Liberation Movements. Some of these women graduated from high school
but most did not. The majority of them worked in factories, as sales
ladies in clothing stores, waitresses, and in other blue-collar jobs.
The granddaughters' generation grew up in a post-industrial and post
civil-rights era. They lived in the inner city and witnessed
gentrification and the challenges of a new economic and social
structure. Most of these young women graduated from high school but a
few did not. Some went to college.
As a Latina born and raised nearby, on the border between Brooklyn
and Queens, I had certain advantages that facilitated my entry and
acceptance into the neighborhood. It was indispensable that I speak
Spanish fluently and that my family still lived in the general area.
Confidentiality was of utmost importance in this study. I assured the
women that they would not be identified and everything they said would
be kept confidential. In some cases women gave me permission to record
our conversations. Surprisingly, some of the women said that they
wanted to be identified because they were proud to be a part of my
study.
The methodology for my analysis grew organically from my
conceptualization of the problem I had found in my research. The
integral model of reproductive freedom and social justice does not focus
on the binary framework of choice and constraint but provides a more
nuanced analysis of how and why women make their fertility decisions.
In order to understand Puerto Rican women's fertility decisions from an
integral perspective, we need an analysis of reproductive freedom that
considers four major realms affecting women's fertility experiences:
personal, cultural, social, and historical. In addition, we need a
synthesis that incorporates and transcends the individual by connecting
the different realms in a dialectical way without reducing any of these
to one unit of analysis. This avoids conceptualizing women's realities
in a linear, hierarchical, and reductionist mode. This model also
includes an analysis of agency within constraints, which reveals how
women negotiate and resist on a micro level.
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