Coping with Sex-Selective Abortions in Vietnam: An Ethnographic Study of Selective Reproduction as Emotional Experience

Hang, Tran Minh

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-58220-7_2

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Over the last decades, several pioneering ethnographies of "selective reproductive technologies" (Wahlberg and Gammeltoft 2018) have been undertaken, covering technologies ranging from amniocentesis in the United States (Rapp 1999;Rothman 1986), ultrasonography and sex-selective abortion in Vietnam (Gammeltoft 2014;Hằng 2011Hằng , 2018, and prenatal and genetic screening in Denmark as well as elsewhere (Heinsen 2018;Ivry 2010;Schwennesen et al 2008Schwennesen et al , 2009Shih 2018;Thomas 2016). This rich body of work has pointed to the excruciating dilemmas and troubling decisions placed on women and their partners by advancing prenatal diagnostic technologies.…”

Section: Accounting For Selective Abortion: Embodied Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shouldering Death: Moral Tensions, Ambiguity, and the Unintended Ramifications of State‐sanctioned Second‐trimester Selective Abortion in Denmark

Heinsen

2022

Med Anthropol Q

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This article is based on an ethnographic study of pregnant couples' embodied, emotional, and moral experiences of second-trimester selective abortion in Denmark. Drawing on 16 selective abortion stories, I unpack the intense, often highly accelerated, days that follow from the moment a fetal aberration is detected to the moment of fetal disposal or burial. I show that although prenatal screening and diagnostics have come to occupy a routinized part of pregnancy in Denmark, when women and their partners opt for termination, they are faced with a series of bodily events and actions they are entirely unprepared for while at the same time feeling essentially alone in grappling with the moral confusion that ensues. I argue that despite widespread medico-legal sanctioning and social endorsement of selective abortion, the specificities of how such terminations are done in Denmark in ambiguous, and conflicted, ways situate women and their partners in a series of moral tensions around how to relate to the abortion, the dead fetus, their grief, and their entitlement to such mourning. By chronicling the core struggles that the process of termination catalyzes, I point to the social and moral ramifications of the embodied practices and medico-legal choreographing of selective abortion in Denmark. [selective abortion, moral tensions, embodied practices, responsibility, death]

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Section: Accounting For Selective Abortion: Embodied Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shouldering Death: Moral Tensions, Ambiguity, and the Unintended Ramifications of State‐sanctioned Second‐trimester Selective Abortion in Denmark

Heinsen

2022

Med Anthropol Q

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“…Such practices can cause anxiety in women and place them in the role of moral philosophers. Many reproductive studies, including those of Rapp (1998, 2000) and Gammeltoft (2014), have revealed how women’s embodiment is technologically mediated and entangled with bio-social practices, which reshape women’s relations to the foetus and to their families (Duden, 1993; Palmer, 2009; Shih, 2015; Hằng, 2018; Shih, 2018). To some feminists, this means that reproductive technologies articulate mainstream values of masculine domination (Lippman, 1991; Duden, 1993; Rothman, 1994; Ivry, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cultural and technological engagement results in reproductive choices being more than simply personal choice (Ivry, 2009; Shih, 2015; Hằng, 2018; Heinsen, 2018; Shih, 2018). Some studies have even argued that what women account for as their own informed choice can actually be seen as a way of uncritically adhering to the routine programmes of their national healthcare system (Heinsen, 2018; Schwennesen, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enacting up: using drawing as a method/ology to explore Taiwanese pregnant women’s experiences of prenatal screening and testing

Shih

Schrøder

2022

Feminist Theory

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Through studying pregnant women’s experience of prenatal screening and testing in Taiwan, this article argues that the collection of participant drawings provides a valuable contribution to feminist methodology where participants are seen as knowledgeable about their own situation. Drawings offer a context that enables us to analyse how participants (pregnant women and their partners) situated themselves in relation to their foetuses, technologies and families. This approach taught us an important methodological lesson, namely that methods always embody a particular political and epistemological location. Inspired by this line of thought, we suggest the concept enacting up, which combines the idea of enacting and the expression acting up to challenge scientific objectivity and biomedical practice while simultaneously giving voice to our participants.

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Pink and Blue: Assemblages of Family Balancing and the Making of Dubai as a Fertility Destination

Kroløkke

Kotsi

2018

Science, Technology, & Human Values

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Selective reproductive technologies (SRTs), such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis, enable enhanced clinical success rates, create reproductive choices, and produce new commercial opportunities. Drawing upon empirical material acquired during a ten-month period in 2016, this study uses a total of twenty-two in-depth interviews with doctors, CEOs, clinical directors, marketing directors, patient counselors, and embryologists to discuss how traveling for the SRT of gender selection for nonmedical reasons is mediated by fertility clinics and clinicians in Dubai. Multimodal analysis was used to analyze the clinical websites’ key rhetorical and visual features. Meanwhile, interviews and observational studies highlighted the context within which gender selection takes place. Findings revealed that gender selection is promoted as a form of “enhancement” and “family balance,” which, when combined with the ways that Dubai is assembled as a sensory (fertility) tourist destination, routinize SRTs and lead to an understanding of gender selection as not merely an individualized reproductive journey but an optimization of the family unit.

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Coping with Sex-Selective Abortions in Vietnam: An Ethnographic Study of Selective Reproduction as Emotional Experience

Cited by 3 publications

References 20 publications

Shouldering Death: Moral Tensions, Ambiguity, and the Unintended Ramifications of State‐sanctioned Second‐trimester Selective Abortion in Denmark

Shouldering Death: Moral Tensions, Ambiguity, and the Unintended Ramifications of State‐sanctioned Second‐trimester Selective Abortion in Denmark

Enacting up: using drawing as a method/ology to explore Taiwanese pregnant women’s experiences of prenatal screening and testing

Pink and Blue: Assemblages of Family Balancing and the Making of Dubai as a Fertility Destination

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