Mourning and Guilt among Greek Women Having Repeated Abortions

Abstract

Repeated abortion as a contraceptive method still remains very popular even among married women in modern Greece. This article presents the results of a clinical study concerning the bereavement process of Greek women after abortion. According to these data, illustrated by two clinical vignettes, strong identificatory tendencies are observed on both the mother and father images, and, thus, abortion might be a replacement and/or displacement of a reparatory character in relation to the “family romance” of each woman. It has therefore been argued that in several cases of repeated abortion, mourning and guilt do not only refer to a murdered and lost “person-fetus” but principally to the death and the loss of an object of ambiguous desire.