Paper short abstract:

This paper describes and explains fertility-related fears in East Cameroon. It shows how women’s risk perceptions around pregnancies, as well as their attempts to manage reproductive insecurities, should be situated in a context where fertility is an uncertain and socially contested affair.

Paper long abstract:

Current international reproductive health debates - influenced by a specific political agenda and discourse of risk - have a tendency to focus on the risks of (multiple) pregnancies to the physical and mental well-being of women all over the world. These risks are often individualized, medicalized and universalized. This paper counters this tendency by situating perceptions of perils around pregnancies in a particular local moral world.

In Cameroon, as elsewhere, fertility is an inherently uncertain affair; the onset, development, and outcomes of pregnancies are often unsure. Thereto comes that fertility is often surrounded by different, often conflicting, social stakes and interests. In a context of plural sexual relationships, fragile conjugal arrangements, ongoing kinship demands and divergent personal aspirations, pregnancies are often vulnerable sites of contestation. On the basis of long-term research on pregnancy and pregnancy interruptions in eastern Cameroon, this paper describes the different ways in which women attempt to manage their reproductive insecurities. It highlights the multiple risk perceptions that surround pregnancies, as well as the inventive ways in which women resort to different (indigenous and biomedical) health care practices to ensure successful pregnancy development and delivery. The central argument of the paper posits that such fertility-related fears and practices should be situated in a context where social risks to pregnancy are deemed more relevant than the physical risks of pregnancies that are central to current global reproductive health debates.