‘Well, She's Entitled to Her Choice’: Negotiating Technologies Amidst Anticipatory Futures of Reproductive Potential
Technologies of Reproduction Across the Lifecourse
ISBN: 978-1-80071-734-3, eISBN: 978-1-80071-733-6
Publication date: 15 September 2022
Abstract
This chapter critiques the relationality between care and context to demonstrate how notions of routinised technologies are disrupted when considering the reproductive realities and situated constraints of ethnic and religious minority women. The chapter integrates ethnographic and qualitative data from two minority contexts, including maternity care provision for Orthodox Jews and how providers approach requests for sex-selective abortion (SSA) when caring for women from South Asian backgrounds. By examining responses to caesarean sections and abortion care among ethnic and religious minorities in the United Kingdom, the chapter critiques how routinised interventions are entangled in the anticipation of future reproductive potential. The idea of anticipatory futures serves as a reflection on the reproductive lifecourse, where technologies carry opportunities and implications that women and carers alike are tasked with negotiating. Taking inspiration from the reproductive justice framework, the chapter builds on a body of work that demonstrates how the concept of ‘choice’ is contingent and not inclusive of the situated constraints that can affect the reproductive lives of women from minority backgrounds. By delving into everyday reproductive constraints, the chapter raises implications for what inclusive woman-centred (or person-centred) care can involve, how providers approach ‘choice’, autonomy and justice in practice, and how their considerations reconfigure the otherwise ‘routine’ delivery of reproductive health services and technologies. Technologies increasingly invest the reproductive lifecourse with potential and anticipation, and the chapter calls on feminist scholars to understand the dilemmas posed for inclusive models of care beyond the discourse of ‘choice’.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
My thanks to all interlocutors whose voices have informed this chapter. I am grateful to Vicky Boydell, Katie Dow, Rishita Nandagiri, Kate Hampshire and Maya Unnithan for their support. This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust [1011955/Z/13/Z]. The research received ethical approval from the Chair of the Research Ethics and Data Protection Committee at the Department of Anthropology at Durham University. The chapter also draws on research into abortion care provision funded by an ESRC Impact Accelerator grant awarded by the University of Sussex to Maya Unnithan (PI) and myself (CO-I). Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Sussex. The research was aligned to a broader investigation into son preference and sex-selection against females in the United Kingdom, funded by the ESRC and led by Sylvie Dubuc (PI) and Maya Unnithan (CO-I), grant code: ES/N01877X/1. This chapter builds on data previously published in Making Bodies Kosher: The Politics of Reproduction among Haredi Jews in England (Berghahn Books, 2019) and Arbitrating Abortion: Sex-Selection and Care Work Among Abortion Providers in England (co-authored with Maya Unnithan in Medical Anthropology, 2020).
Citation
Kasstan, B. (2022), "‘Well, She's Entitled to Her Choice’: Negotiating Technologies Amidst Anticipatory Futures of Reproductive Potential", Boydell, V. and Dow, K. (Ed.) Technologies of Reproduction Across the Lifecourse (Emerald Studies in Reproduction, Culture and Society), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 209-224. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80071-733-620221019
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022 Ben Kasstan. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited