In reporting this story, we asked many people – researchers, lawyers, reproductive rights advocates, doctors, midwives, and other health workers – for their definitions of pregnancy. While their definitions didn’t make it into the episode, we’ve included some of them below for you to consider. In the definitions we gathered, we see that pregnancy isn’t a simple binary that’s easily agreed upon. Instead, desire, choice, and beliefs shape how we approach an experience that is both biological and psychological. "If we take it from the religious perspective … they suggest that the moment of conception is … a pregnancy, but of course we know medically speaking, scientifically speaking, that unless this kind of joining of cells implants, that it can just go away with the rest of menstrual blood. And so … biomedicine might not think that’s pregnancy."
– Rebecca Irons, Medical Anthropologist "What is pregnancy? When does it begin and where does it begin? So it seems to be completely normal and uncontentious and unproblematic until you start thinking, well, is it conception? Is it when the conceived cell gets embedded? Is it when an embryo actually starts to develop or is it when the woman and potentially the woman's partner stop and self-identify it and say, ‘Well, I realize I'm pregnant because I've had a test’… So there are lots of different ways in which one can…understand pregnancy."
– Simon Cohn, Professor of Medical Anthropology "We're always looking to create lines between this and that…And the problem is [pregnancy] is a biological process and biological processes are not determined by lines.They are a continuum. And so you have one cell join with another cell – an egg and a sperm – each one cell and they become another cell. Then it divides. And at some point, some people believe that's a person. At another point, other people believe it's a person."
– Beverly Winikoff, President of Gynuity Health Projects "For me, the root of it is choice. Can you exercise your freedom in terms of choosing to be pregnant?"
– Jacqueline Pitanguy, Sociologist "I love the idea of agency…I love the idea of … the difference between a wanted pregnancy and an unwanted pregnancy actually meaning something. The difference between being able to call something a fetus versus a baby depends on the agency of the person gestating it. So if the person wants this thing desperately… ‘Congrats on your baby. She's gonna be here soon.’ But if the person doesn't want to be pregnant, it could be the same gestational age, we're going to call it a fetus."
– Khiara Bridges, Professor at UC Berkeley School of Law | 
No comments:
Post a Comment