Who Was Afraid of Pregnancy Tests? Gestational Information and Reproduction Policies in France (1920–50)

Abstract

Though resulting from a long-term process, the need to manage pregnancies both medically and bureaucratically became a state concern, especially from the 1920s onwards. A woman’s official obligation to notify the state of her pregnancy (and therefore to know it on time) goes beyond a matter of biopolicies and poses a range of contradictions. ‘Pregnant or not?’ – as an issue of knowledge – is a powerful tool for apprehending the tensions between individual freedom, privacy, institutional requirements and professional powers.In order to better understand the historical meaning of pregnancy diagnostics in mid-twentieth-century France, this paper combines three dimensions: uncertainty and its management; the informational asymmetry between institutional agents and women; and the diachronic dimension of gestation. Writing this history sheds more light on an apparent paradox: while knowing and notifying one’s own pregnancy became a duty, the tools that could help women eliminate some doubt right from the first months of their pregnancy – in particular the innovation of laboratory diagnosis – was seen as a danger. When, in 1938, private laboratories began publishing advertisements for the laboratory test in the most widely-read newspapers, tending to reframe it as a commercial service, the anti-abortion crusade was increasing its propaganda and its political pressure. This crusade’s legal victory proved incomplete, but for a long time some of the most conservative physicians recommended great parsimony in prescribing testing. Combined with reducing the legal time limit for notification, this conflict shows how the state injunctions towards women could look like a ‘double bind’.

A historical argument for regulatory failure in the case of Primodos and other hormone pregnancy tests

“…Following the independent corroboration of Aarskog's findings by research at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the Swedish Medical Board removed the indication of ‘pregnancy testing’ from the entry for Primodos in Sweden's national drug registry in 1972, although Primodos and Duogynon continued to be used in Sweden for the treatment of amenorrhoea until 1975 and 1978, respectively. In France, where pregnancy testing was linked to illegal abortion until the law changed in 1975 ( Cahen, forthcoming ), products such as Primodos were viewed with suspicion and were not authorized for use as HPTs. Lack of authorization, however, did not prevent their off-label use in pregnancy testing until the mid 1970s, and some brands persisted on the market as treatments for amenorrhoea until more recently.…”