When it comes to the freedom of deciding about childbirth, Slovenia is one of the more liberal countries, but it is not entirely immune to the pressure and influence of the processes of recriminalization currently happening worldwide. Although the right to abortion is a part of the Slovenian constitution, the tendencies for its restriction are pervasive. These tendencies primarily originate from conservatives and Catholics, who by opposing the right to abortion, implicitly equate womanhood with motherhood. In this thesis, I explore the images of womanhood that are being (re)constructed through the Slovenian binary media discourse on women’s reproductive rights. The theoretical part comprises relevant concepts in the field of women’s human rights, the genesis of reproductive rights in Slovenia, the media construction of genders and the recriminalization of abortion using examples from the USA and Poland. The empirical part consists of a critical discourse analysis of online articles in Nova24TV and Mladina. The analysis results in identifying linguistic strategies through which each media outlet defines abortion and consequently, womanhood. The difference between the two selected media outlets is evident in how they construct the social status of women, with Nova24TV prioritizing the status of the fetus over women, while Mladina prioritizes the rights of thinking women with bodily autonomy and integrity.
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