Paper short abstract:

Doctors in Taiwan, China and Vietnam tend to overuse progesterone as miscarriage prevention without clinical evidences. Based on fieldwork in Taiwan, the researcher found that this medication is an object linking modern medicine with the traditional view of the fetus.

Paper long abstract:

Doctors in Taiwan, China and Vietnam tend to overuse progesterone as miscarriage prevention without clinical evidences. Based on fieldwork in Taiwan, the researcher found that this medication is an object linking the modern medicine with the traditional view of the fetus. Medicalization of early pregnancy is an outcome of such a fusion. The finding may shed light on the varieties of the seemingly universal reproductive biomedicine.

In standard biomedicine textbooks, early miscarriage is associated with a defective fetus or abnormal chromosomes. So proactive medical intervention of miscarriage is not always in patients' best interest. Securing the fetus (an'tai), however, is a pillar in the traditional Chinese medicine's management of pregnancy. Chinese medicine assumes that miscarriage, which often resulted from human errors, is preventable. In addition to being a key element in Chinese medicine for women, an'tai is also part of folk healing and religious beliefs. It contains a variety of daily taboos for pregnant women and their families to observe. All these practices assume that the fetus is highly vulnerable and that people should help secure it. In Taiwan, progesterone is interestingly called "the medicine for securing the fetus" (an'tai yiao) by lay people and doctors. This medication is thus a point of contact between biomedicine and traditional knowledge, and the intersection between the two views of the fetus.