"Och det är detta det hela handlar om; varje människas rätt att leva": en kritisk diskursanalys av abortfrågan i Dagen 1991-1996.

Sammanfattning: In countries such as the U.S and Poland abortion laws have recently been made more restrictive, however this has not been the case in Sweden. The debate around abortion in Sweden quietened down after the law allowing abortion “on demand” was passed in 1974, but resurged during the 1990s with for example the group “Yes to life” (“Ja till livet”) organizing demonstrations. “Yes to life” mainly sprung from free churches, such as Livets ord. Thus, this thesis will study how one of the largest free church-publications, Dagen, argued for its stance on abortion between 1991 and 1996. This is studied through a critical discourse analysis based on Fairclough. Three discourses are analyzed, one about when life is seen to begin for the fetus, one about selective abortion and one about how abortion on demand relates to societal development. Furthermore, the theoretical concepts “fetal personhood” and “deservingness” will be applied to the discourses found. The conclusions are that Dagen’s stance on abortion is based on the three aforementioned discourses. They are used to create personhood for fetuses, thus making abortion a conflict between the rights of the pregnant person and the fetus, to construe selective abortions as more wrong than other abortions meaning that abortion on demand is wrong since it allows selective abortions and by connecting abortion on demand to a perceived negative development of society as a whole.