A child at any cost : A study on how the issue about assisted reproduction for single people is being interpreted by the Swedish media

Abstract: March 13th 2012 the Swedish social Committee brings up a proposal that assisted reproduction should be legalize for single women in Sweden. The suggestion was quickly forwarded to the parliament for a decision making. Although majority of the Swedish parties (the alliances) are positive about this proposal, there are also a few who are strongly against the proposal, for example the Christian Democratic Party. The purpose of this study has been to investigate how the two Swedish newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet has written about the issue on legalizing assisted reproduction for single women in Sweden. To help me come to my results and conclusion on this study I decided to use the quantitative content analysis and the qualitative text analysis method. I have specifically chosen to concentrate on how these two newspapers have chosen to present this issue and what angles do Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet uses to present this issue to their readers. After my qualitative text analysis, I came to the conclusion that this issue didn’t get the attention that it deserves from both of the newspapers. Since the issue is about babies, women and their bodies, I expected the newspapers to write about this issue as a gender issue, but that was not the case. Instead it was twisted around by the press and made into a political fight between the Christian Democrat party that is against the proposal and the alliances that is positive to the proposal. In all the articles I had chosen to analyze, I as a reader was met by the voices of different politicians that had strong opinions about legalizing assisted reproduction for single women. The opinion of ordinary people didn’t seem to matter to any of the journalist and neither was the opinion of women, because I realized that neither of these groups were found in the articles. Even more interesting was the fact that the voices of the politicians were all dominated by men. In conclusion looking at the issue on legalizing assisted reproduction for single women, one would supposed that the issue is going to be based on subjects about babies, hospitals, women and their bodies. Instead the issue was made into a political fight and dominated by male voices and opinions.