Dissertation Research: Support for Tanfer Emin: Technological Change in Pregnancy Termination, 1850 - 1980

Suny At Stony Brook, Stony Brook NY

Investigators

Abstract

In the last three decades, studies in the history and sociology of technology have taught us a great deal about the processes of invention, development, and diffusion. However, very few of these studies bring the insights of the history of technology to bear on medical and reproductive technologies, despite the fact that these technologies are having an enormous social, ethical and economic impact on today's world. By placing these reproductive technologies in their proper historical context, this dissertation research project will not only elucidate the issues with which our predecessors struggled, but also shed a ray of light on the current debates over pregnancy termination and the likely social impact of new technologies such as RU-486. Almost nothing is known, historically, about the science and technology of pregnancy termination. No scholar has ever thoroughly explored the changing technologies of pregnancy termination during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and no effort has been made to understand how these changing technologies were connected to the politics of medical professionalization, specialization, and commercialization. This dissertation project seeks to fill this historical vacuum. This study will trace the changes in pregnancy termination technology from 1850 (when herbal methods began to be replaced by surgical methods, and knowledge about fertilization was growing) to 1980 (by which time numerous new surgical methods had been developed and diffused, both fertilization and ovulation were well understood, and the different stages of fetal development had been demarcated). Since pregnancy termination has always been a politically charged subject, these scientific and technological changes must, of necessity, be viewed within the context of a variety of disputes: disputes between laypeople and professionals about who should be licensed to control pregnancy termination; disputes between men and women about who should be responsible for fertility control; disputes between those who want the procedure to be legal and those who want it banned; disputes between advocates of one technological system over another. This dissertation project will thus be a study both in the social construction of technology and in the technological construction of one very significant social process -- pregnancy termination. In preliminary research, the Co-PI has uncovered material in published sources (medical journals, medical textbooks, patent records, trade catalogues) and in archival collections. NSF funds support travel to other relevant archival collections.