Loss Of Choice Research Articles

Gender, Culture and Ethics: Confronting the Complexities of Sex-Selective Abortion in Canada

This article examines the ethical and cultural implications of sex-selective abortion, with a focus on the Indo-Canadian community. Drawing from a 2016 Canadian Medical Association Journal study and expert opinions, including a CBC radio discussion and Dr. Jen Gunter's commentary, it highlights the conflict between reproductive rights and entrenched gender biases. The piece critiques the challenges in legislating against sex-selective abortion, emphasizing the infringement on reproductive rights and privacy, and the need to address deeper societal and cultural factors behind sex selection. The analysis includes cultural perspectives, revealing how societal norms and familial pressures in the Indo-Canadian community impact reproductive decisions, often leading to coercion and loss of choice. The feminist viewpoint links sex-selective abortion to broader issues of gender inequality and misogyny. Conclusively, the article argues for a holistic approach to addressing sex-selective abortion, combining legal, educational, and cultural changes. This approach aims to cultivate a society that values gender equality and respects women’s autonomy, ensuring their decisions are free from coercion and societal prejudice.

Micro-Loss; Expanding Our Vocabulary to Describe Grief during the Time of Covid.

Loss of choice, loss of freedom, and uncertainty are all themes we are intimate with in Palliative Care. On March 23, near the beginning of the pandemic, the Harvard Business Review published an ar...

The Status Dynamics of Role Blurring in the Time of COVID-19.

Has the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic altered the status dynamics of role blurring? Although researchers typically investigate its conflictual aspects, the authors assess if the work-home interface might also be a source of status—and the relevance of schedule control in these processes. Analyzing data from nationally representative samples of workers in September 2019 and March 2020, the authors find that role blurring is associated with elevated status, but the onset of coronavirus disease 2019 weakens that effect. Likewise, schedule control enhances the status of role blurring, but its potency is also weakened during the pandemic. These findings align with the suggestion that role blurring signals a commitment to work and adherence to ideal worker norms. However, the pandemic changed that by intensifying role integration and possibly by reducing the degree of agency once associated with role blurring. The loss of choice around role blurring might have also diluted the distinctive status that it once carried.

A qualitative meta-synthesis of women’s experiences of labor dystocia

ProblemResearchers have prioritized understanding and differentiating the pathophysiologic mechanisms to improve precision in diagnosis and individualization of care, however the experiences of women with labor dystocia have been underexamined. BackgroundManagement of labor dystocia has been identified as an opportunity for reducing the rate of unnecessary cesarean births and the associated risks to women and their infants. This meta-synthesis explores women’s experiences of labor dystocia to enrich the discussion of care practices and contextualize discussions of shared decision making in what is most meaningful to women. QuestionsHow does prolonged labor influence women’s experience of birth and motherhood? What are women’s experiences with decision-making about labor augmentation during prolonged labor? MethodsSandelowski and Barroso’s meta-synthesis approach was used to analyze primary qualitative studies of women’s experiences of labor dystocia. Through inductive thematic synthesis and reciprocal translation, themes identified in qualitative research, quotations, and coded meaning units were aggregated and interpreted into derived categories and themes. FindingsFourteen qualitative studies were analyzed. Women experienced labor dystocia as a transition from healthy labor to abnormal labor requiring medical support consistent with Transition Theory by Meleis. Six new categories and thirty themes were identified. Each category and theme reflects a distinct component of the experience of labor dystocia. Discussion/conclusionThere is wide variation in the way women experience labor dystocia. Facilitation of the transition from healthy labor to labor dystocia can be supported by a fluid, adaptable method of caring for women in the face of uncertainty and loss of choice.

Domestic violence beyond representation: finding a feminist subject in the Allison Baden-Clay murder case

ABSTRACTAllison Baden-Clay’s 2012 murder by her husband, Gerard, was the tragic end of years of living with his abuse. It was also one of Australia’s most high-profile news stories over the four years it took for Gerard Baden-Clay to exhaust his legal avenues for appeal. As feminist media scholars argue, the media representation of one victim standing for all is itself contradictory and ideologically invested. This paper explores the representation of this murdered “wife and mother” as a process of gendered subject construction that exceeds media and legal definitions. I argue for a return to this representational subject as a way of accounting for gender ideological work in discourse and beyond. My concern is with Allison’s loss of choice, before and after death, in how her circumstances were disclosed, and how her story shifted from “female tragedy” to her legacy as a “face of family violence.” Following Teresa de Lauretis 1987, I also consider how finding a feminist subject in the margins of stories about this high-profile case can account for the unrepresentability of different forms of loss, and women’s multiple experiences of violence.

Owners of the secret: The impact of rape trauma on Ugandan women in the Rakai district

abstract This focus investigates the effects of rape trauma on women in the Rakai District of south-western Uganda from the perspective of their own culture. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with female rape survivors, analysed using computer coding and verified through discussion of preliminary results with participants in a feedback meeting. Results indicate that female rape survivors in Uganda experience a multitude of symptoms as a result of their rape, including fear of disease, physical problems, emotional/cognitive difficulties, negative social changes (including relational and sexual impacts), occupational difficulties, lack of security, shame (including issues of secrecy and reporting) and loss of choice.

Spirituality in the Therapeutic Community

Abstract Addiction is a power greater than ourselves that results in bondage. This bondage destroys the alcoholic and/or the addict and his or her family in a cycle of inter-generational self-perpetuation. Addiction as a bondage is characterized by the loss of choice over one's desires, beliefs, and actions: the insanity of being unable to “just say no.” Historically, the Christian church has attempted to address this bondage of addiction by using a model of Atonement that identified addiction as sin. This sin is therefore in need of confession, forgiveness and a demonstration of new behavior. This model alone has not been universally successful in dealing with addiction. The Christus Victor model of Atonement offers an additional understanding of atonement through faith in Jesus Christ. Christ is not only identified as a “power greater than ourselves,” but he is also recognized as a power greater than the power of addiction. Moreover, as The Victor, he is a “higher power” who is well able to restore us to sanity. Sanity returns when the alcoholic and/or the addict is given an ability to have choice over his or her desires, beliefs, and actions.

Are loss functions all the same?

In this letter, we investigate the impact of choosing different loss functions from the viewpoint of statistical learning theory. We introduce a convexity assumption, which is met by all loss functions commonly used in the literature, and study how the bound on the estimation error changes with the loss. We also derive a general result on the minimizer of the expected risk for a convex loss function in the case of classification. The main outcome of our analysis is that for classification, the hinge loss appears to be the loss of choice. Other things being equal, the hinge loss leads to a convergence rate practically indistinguishable from the logistic loss rate and much better than the square loss rate. Furthermore, if the hypothesis space is sufficiently rich, the bounds obtained for the hinge loss are not loosened by the thresholding stage.

Health care and the poor: psychological implications of restrictive policies.

Medicaid proposals increasingly focus on cost-saving strategies that restrict clients' control over where and when they may receive services. This study used a field experiment in an urban welfare office to examine the possible effects of two aspects of restrictive policies: the loss of choice of providers and adverse patient mix (i.e., when the majority of a provider's clients are Medicaid beneficiaries). Results indicate that health care presented within the context of not having a choice is derogated and that choice and patient mix combine to influence intentions to seek care. Persons who did not choose the health plan in a simulated choice, who had fewer choices than expected, and who did not accept restricted choice also had negative perceptions.

Social aging, disorganization, and loss of choice.

Social aging, disorganization, and loss of choice.