Re-visioning ultrasound through women’s accounts of pre-abortion care in England
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Authors
Beynon-Jones, Siân M.
Issue Date
2015-10
Type
Article
Language
en_US
Keywords
Abortion , Ultrasound , Women’s Experiences , Pregnancy
Alternative Title
Abstract
Feminist scholarship has demonstrated the importance of sustained critical engagement with ultrasound visualizations of pregnant women’s bodies. In response to portrayals of these images as “objective” forms of knowledge about the fetus, it has drawn attention to the social practices through which the meanings of ultrasound are produced. This article makes a novel contribution to this project by addressing an empirical context that has been neglected in the existing feminist literature concerning ultrasound, namely, its use during pregnancies that women decide to terminate. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with women concerning their experiences of abortion in England, I explore how the meanings of having an ultrasound prior to terminating a pregnancy are discursively constructed. I argue that women’s accounts complicate dominant representations of ultrasound and that in so doing, they multiply the subject positions available to pregnant women.
Description
Citation
Beynon-Jones S. M. (2015). Re-visioning Ultrasound through Women's Accounts of Pre-abortion Care in England. Gender & society : official publication of Sociologists for Women in Society, 29(5), 694–715. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243215590101
Publisher
Gender & Society : Official Publication of Sociologists for Women in Society