Paper short abstract:

In this paper I analyse the relationship between gestational age and viability to explore how technoscientific concepts are translated into legal language in reproductive policies and judicial verdicts, and prompt moral and criminal judgements on the basis of specific understandings of temporality.

Paper long abstract:

Pregnancy dating, or gestational age assessment, is one of the processes that is considered crucial to design care for pregnant people, irrespective of the outcome of the pregnancy. Gestational age is also strictly related to the notion of foetal viability.

In this paper the relationship between the concepts of gestational age and viability will be analysed to explore how given technoscientific processes and concepts are not only translated into legal language when it comes to produce policies around reproductive options and healthcare (e.g. abortion policies) but they are also mobilised to sustain arguments of criminal intentionality and behaviour vs self-managed healthcare practices in judicial verdicts. Drawing on the analysis of healthcare protocols, reproductive laws and judicial documents, this paper will introduce the starting phase of an international and interdisciplinary project on gestational age assessment, which is going to roll out in the years to come.

In particular, as a case study, an Italian verdict of homicide will be unpacked to investigate what knowledges, healthcare practices and understandings of temporality are been valued or devalued in relation to abortion, self-care, and foetal life in such a cultural context. The paper will especially focus on how the notions of gestational age and viability are used to express positions on time and temporality about pregnancy discontinuation and prompt moral and criminal judgements.

Paper short abstract:

Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in Montenegro, this paper explores how biomedical technologies and sociocultural ideas about gender intersect with the understanding of foetal viability in Montenegro, a country with a skewed sex ratio at birth.

Paper long abstract:

Montenegro ranks among the top ten countries globally with the most imbalanced sex ratio at birth (UNDP 2012). Son preference persists in Montenegro, as evidenced not only in historical records but also in contemporary society (Stump 2011, UNDP 2012). This preference stems from the perception of men and male offspring as more valuable than women and female offspring (Kiščenko 2021, 87); male offspring are expected to inherit the family name, assets, and provide care for aging parents. Some prospective parents use biomedical technologies such as prenatal testing (CVS, Cell-free foetal DNA testing) and ultrasound scans to determine the sex of the foetus. In certain instances, sex-selective abortion is employed to prevent the viability of a female foetus.

In this paper, I argue that reproductive ideas, shaped by sociocultural perceptions of gender and facilitated by the use of biomedical technology, perpetuate deeply problematic notions that prioritize men and male offspring over women and female offspring in Montenegrin society. Consequently, foetal viability in certain parts of Montenegrin society becomes entwined with gendered potentiality—gendered ideas and practices associated with the unborn child. In addition, while sex-selective abortion is construed as the termination of a female foetus, the action itself harbors the potential for a subsequent pregnancy and the desired gendered foetus in the future.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the complexities regarding the experiences of preterm babies’ parents and health professionals at the NICU of a hospital in Barcelona. It shows how both newborns and parents find themselves in a liminal space where their individual identity (personhood) is often challenged.

Paper long abstract:

The definition of personhood and the entanglements thought which this notion is socially constructed have been a rich field of study for social anthropologists. When examining the elements that shape this definition, social and technoscientific understandings of pregnancy and birth have been considered as crucial sites to understand it. According to the Spanish law, personhood is assigned from the moment a baby is born alive and is completely detached from the mother’s womb. This aspect is closely linked to the notion of viability, which refers to the point in gestation in which the fetus is presumed to have chances of survival outside the uterus.

Based on fieldwork in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of a hospital in Barcelona, we argue that the notion of liminality is crucial to understand the ontological choreographies of newborns and parents in this specific context. Being situated between life and death, newborns often find themselves in a “liminal space” where their identity as individuals becomes an unstable category. In the same way, also parents become liminal beings, as their feelings towards their babies are often ambivalent and their roles as “mummy” and “daddy” (as the medical staff often refers to them), may be difficult to assume and highly dependent on the progress of their babies at the NICU. Navigating through the testimonies of health professionals and parents, we show how the boundaries of “personhood” become blurry and contested between medical staff, newborns and parents, all of which participate in the discussion in different ways.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss the ethical implications of artificial amnion and placenta technology (AAPT) on the issue of abortion rights.

Paper long abstract:

Artificial amnion and placenta technology (AAPT), commonly called ‘artificial womb technology’, is viewed as the most promising pathway to improve the health and life prospects of pre-term infants, given that neonatal care as it stands is associated with significant morbidity and long-term damage. The notion that a neonate might complete gestation in an artificial placenta is known as ‘partial ectogestation’. The long-term hope is that AAPT will be able to sustain ‘neonates’ even earlier than our current standard of viability (>22~24 weeks) to replace the palliative care that is usually recommended for neonates below viability. This theoretical possibility has prompted some to suggest that ectogestation might resolve the issue of abortion, or at least provide an alternative to it.

Yet, renegotiating what is implied for abortion rights due to the advent of AAPT is a complex issue. Because most pro-choice arguments for abortion are premised on bodily choice and autonomy, questions about choosing whether the fetus should continue to develop independently of the human body at such early stages of development have not yet had to be invoked. The possibility of continued ‘life’ for the fetus at any state of its development will, I argue, generate fresh justificatory schemes that might compete with the pro-choice model for the justification of abortion. As such, it is imperative to articulate also what reasons there may be in this scenario to justify the ‘death’ of the fetus.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims at situating the viability narrative within representations of the foetus before viability itself, especially with its growth and development. It will do so drawing on interviews where the gestational age limits of Spanish abortion law are discussed with research participants.

Paper long abstract:

Foetal viability represents a crucial issue in social studies of reproduction. Its medical applications and public understanding has well-studied implications for sexual and reproductive health rights (in terms of both access and legislation), as well as on concepts of central interest to social and cultural anthropology: personhood, identity, body, life, and death. However, this paper aims at situating the viability narrative within representations and ideas of the foetus before viability itself. Specifically, with the foetus as an entity whose development and growth is central to its own mode of existence.

This paper draws on the results from the ERC-funded BAR2LEGAB mixed-methods project, on barriers to access legal abortion, as well as travels to seek abortion care, in Europe. The materials are 51 in-depth interviews with Spanish pregnant people, seeking abortion care in Spain, questioned –among other topics – about their opinion on the Spanish abortion law and on the different gestational age limits established in it. Ideas on the morality and legality of abortion, in this context, closely relate to ideas about foetal development. Foetal body features, size, growth, especially seen against the ideal endpoint of the “baby”, are all mobilized to negotiate and discuss legal limits. By analysing these discourses in the frame of different constituencies that come to define knowledge of the foetus, it will be possible to situate the concept of viability in a wider context of representations of foetal development, and explore the links between them.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted within the Dutch maternity care system, I analyzed ways in which communication between patients and medical professionals shapes experiences of parents going through first trimester birth.

Paper long abstract:

Communication constitutes a major part of the experience, when accessing medical care. It is especially important to maintain clear and compassionate communication in vulnerable moments such as first trimester birth which is an unfortunate ending of one in four pregnancies.

Medical care focuses on management of physical symptoms and prevention or resolution of complications resulting from unexpected outcomes. The emotional side of the experience and the influence it might have on the mental health of the parents is often overlooked or comes as a secondary concern.

In my research I focused on understanding how communication influences these extremely powerful experiences and how it might be improved to contribute to better preparedness of the parents and easier grieving process. One of the biggest themes common for most interactions was the lack of compassion from the medical team, and dismissal of the importance of the pregnancy loss based on the gestational age of the fetus. The experiences of grieving parents were exacerbated by the inappropriate vocabulary and extremely medicalised approach from medical professionals, who tend to focus on finding solutions even in situations when the tragic outcome can no longer be fixed. Exploring these experiences and their commonalities will benefit both medical professionals and future patients alike, to navigate the sensitive moments surrounding first trimester births.

Paper short abstract:

Starting from the unsettling ambiguity of the aborted but not-quite-dead fetus, this presentation scrutinizes clinic staff's "ontological careographies" through which life/death are made in the context of disability-selective pregnancy termination in Austria.

Paper long abstract:

Starting from the unsettling ambiguity of the aborted but not-quite-dead fetus at the threshold of viability, this presentation scrutinizes how clinical staff interpret fetal life signs following disability-selective pregnancy terminations in Austria. Understanding these interpretations as attempts to provide certainty in a context of ontological uncertainty, I analyze them as acts of care that are part of intricate “ontological careographies” and have considerable symbolic and material consequences for patients/parents and staff. Overall, I argue that the interpretation of life signs is not a simple matter of biological “facts” and that what is ultimately at stake is the active making of life and death.