Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses perceptions of high-risk pregnancies and their medical management, focusing on the impact of scientific advances on risk awareness and reproductive expectations. Ethnographic findings reveal the vulnerabilities of high-risk pregnant people, especially in marginalized populations

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the cultural perceptions surrounding high-risk pregnancies and their management in medical settings, with a focus on the intersection between medical decisions and reproductive desires. The results of ethnographic research in a regional maternity hospital support an analysis of risk assessment and probability as the foundation of contemporary pregnancy care, and its connection with the medicalization of reproductive experiences, highlighting the importance of sociocultural factors, such as the experience and beliefs of pregnant people, often disregarded in favor of biomedical considerations. This study, centered on the relationships between healthcare providers and pregnant individuals screened at high obstetric risk, emphasizes the influence of contemporary technoscientific advances on the awareness of reproductive uncertainties, while recognizing the growing tendency for individuals to move away from discourses based exclusively on medical authority.

The construction of pregnancy as a hazardous event is under negotiation between professionals and patients. Ongoing negotiations for decision-making power in obstetric care are built on a binary of “normal” and “pathological”. The study reveals inequalities in access to the knowledge that legitimizes decision-making in a highly hierarchical health care setting, as well as a specific set of vulnerabilities of pregnant people at high obstetric risk, especially in marginalized populations. This work aims to raise questions about the implications of making and managing uncertainty in reproductive processes, as well as the impact of emerging new areas of uncertainty on our understandings of the beginning and end of life, reproductive rights, and expectations around parenthood in a medicalized setting.