Doctoral Dissertation Research: Care, Body and Rights: Maternal Health and the Production of Emergency in the Contemporary U.S.

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

University of Pennsylvania doctoral student Elizabeth Hallowell, under the supervision of Dr. Fran Barg, will undertake an ethnographic study of reproductive medicine and law in the United States. Specifically, this study will trace recent shifts in healthcare practices and policies that point to a reconfiguration of pregnancy and childbirth as medical emergencies. This project will combine fieldwork at two sites in southeastern Pennsylvania -- a region where the availability of maternal healthcare is increasingly limited -- with textual analysis of scientific, legislative, and historical documents pertaining to reproductive medicine and federal health law. It will track this reconfiguration at three levels: 1) individual experiences of expectant and new mothers and their reproductive healthcare providers; 2) the institutional reorganization of reproductive healthcare and scientific knowledge production about maternal health; and 3) changes in U.S. health policy from the 1980s to the present. In so doing, this research will contribute to a deeper understanding of how pregnancy and birth are shaped by, and linked to, the organization of institutionalized reproductive medicine and law. Typically within the study of gender, health, and policy in the U.S., what constitutes a body, 'good' healthcare, and 'full' political belonging are taken for granted. This research will probe these categories as it analyzes what kinds of bodies and forms of belonging are imagined by reproductive medicine and lawmakers in the U.S. today. This analysis will therefore be useful to other researchers investigating how pregnancy and childbirth are shaped, experienced, and understood throughout the U.S. and in other countries. The findings from this study will also be of interest to policymakers and healthcare providers, as well as to members of the public who are engaged in debates about healthcare. The project will consider how medical and legal attention to certain kinds of bodily vulnerability (such as pregnancy-related emergencies) can obscure other forms of collective vulnerability (such as the decreasing availability of prenatal care in southeastern Pennsylvania and throughout many parts of the U.S.). The researchers will disseminate their findings widely to many different types of audiences, and the project will contribute to the training of a social scientist.