The pregnant subject has a unique experience of her body. The dichotomy between self and other, self and world, breaks down. She can experience a positive narcissism and sense of process. Some conceptualizations and practices of contemporary medicine, however, can alienate the pregnant subject from this bodily experience. Keywords: Embodiment, Split Subjectivity CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

A number of developments in the medical field have changed the debate about the ethics of abortion. These developments include: advances in fetal physiology, the increase in neonatal intensive care and the survival rates of premature infants. This paper discusses the idea of selective termination and the effects that these decisions have on disabled people of today. It presents a critique of the counselling services that are provided for the parents of a disabled fetus and discusses how this is viewed (...) from a social perspective. The article ends with an argument that the mother deserves to be autonomous in the decision of abortion. The easiest and most fair way to develop her autonomy is to consider the relationship between a professional and a mother as an expert–expert relationship. Here both parties are considered experts in diagnostic information, treatment options, possibilities, and their history, family roots, philosophy and way of life, respectively. (shrink)

In 2006, and again in 2007, I suffered the miscarriages of two wanted and painstakingly planned pregnancies. In the aftermath of each, I found myself unprepared, as do many women who miscarry, for the devastation I would feel. In my attempts to cope, I sought solace in the written testimony of other women who had miscarried, in the medical statistics that reassured me I still had a strong chance of carrying another pregnancy to term, in the experiences of friends and (...) colleagues who had dealt with miscarriage and other reproductive difficulties, and in the expertise of counselors who helped me process my thoughts and feelings. While each of these avenues was helpful in its own right, I still found myself struggling.. (shrink)

My essay is framed by Hypatia's first special issue on Motherhood and Sexuality at one end, and by the most recent special issue (as of this writing) on the work of Iris Young, whose work on pregnant embodiment has become canonical, at the other. The questions driving this essay are: When we look back over the last twenty-five years, what has changed in our conceptions of pregnancy and maternity, both in feminist theory and in popular culture? What aspects of feminist (...) debates from the 1970s and 1980s are still relevant today? And, how might what appear to be radical shifts in popular perceptions of pregnancy actually continue traditional values that objectify and “abjectify” the maternal body?Here, I will focus on three central elements of the revaluation of pregnancy and maternity as they show up in feminist philosophy and in popular culture: 1. The relationship between pregnancy and sexuality, both in terms of pregnant sexuality and in terms of the pregnant body as sexual object; 2. The “choice” to become a mother as a “feminist choice”; 3. The temporality of pregnancy and birth as marking something like “women's time.”. (shrink)

In Pregnant Embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation, Iris Marion Young describes the lived bodily experience of women who have “chosen” their pregnancies. In this essay, Lundquist underscores the need for a more inclusive phenomenology of pregnancy. Drawing on sources in literature, psychology, and phenomenology, she offers descriptions of the cryptic phenomena of rejected and denied pregnancy, indicating the vast range of pregnancy experience and illustrating substantial phenomenological differences between “chosen” and unwanted pregnancies.

In Pregnant Embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation, Iris Marion Young describes the lived bodily experience of women who have “chosen” their pregnancies. In this essay, Lundquist underscores the need for a more inclusive phenomenology of pregnancy. Drawing on sources in literature, psychology, and phenomenology, she offers descriptions of the cryptic phenomena of rejected and denied pregnancy, indicating the vast range of pregnancy experience and illustrating substantial phenomenological differences between “chosen” and unwanted pregnancies.

Starting from the intuition, shared by many women, that the legal right to an abortion must be defended but that they themselves could never undergo one, I offer an account of why pregnancy is morally valuable and why, nevertheless, it is often permissible to end one. Developing the idea that human pregnancy centrally involves the activity of calling a fetus into personhood, I argue that the permissibility of stopping this activity hinges on the goodness or badness of one's moral luck.