The Pregnancy/Childbearing Project: A Phenomenology of Miscarriage [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520913226

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The Pregnancy ^ Childbearing Project

The Pregnancy Childbearing Project A Phenomenology of Miscarriage

Jennifer Scuro

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD INTERNATIONAL

London • New York

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SEI 1 4AB www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Scuro All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN:

HB 978-1-78660-292-3 PB 978-1-78660-293-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available ISBN 9781786602923 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 9781786602930 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 9781786602947 (electronic) © The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction to the Project Part I

ix

Miscarriage or Abortion? (Or, #shoutingmyabortion in a Graphic Novel)

Partii

An Interlude on Philosophical Allegory

1 177

Part III A Phenomenological Reading of Miscarriage

189

Part IV Griefwork: How Do You Get Over What You Cannot Get Over?

223

Works Cited

245

Index

253

About the Author

259

v

Acknowledgments

Bianca Jeannot and Amanda Hernandez were still undergraduates at the College of New Rochelle when they were completing their graphic novel One of Us (2016). I was so inspired by their work and the process by which they collaborated on constructing a textual and visual narrative that only about six months later I "unloaded" all the flash-card memories of my pregnancies into a sketchbook. I am so grateful to both of them for sharing their work with me and, like my colleagues, immensely proud of their accomplishments. I wrote the original thesis of part III of this book, "A Phenomenological Reading of Miscarriage," quite soon after my third pregnancy, and it is the starting point chronologically for this project. I thank Eva Kittay, Caroline Lundquist, and Sarah LaChance Adams for supporting this part of the project and for their kind words regarding it. When publishers of the anthology Coming to Life: Philosophies of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering cut my contribution before going to press, I put my project away as rejected. I tried a couple of years later to condense and clarify some of my thesis for journal publication, but without success; though I had taken my personal experience out of the project, these academic rejections of the work were just too emotional. I have to thank my husband, Stephen, for all that we have shared and for his consistent love and acceptance, especially as I recalled these difficult experiences and narrated them—often quite graphically. When I drafted the graphic novel narrative in late 2015 and early 2016, even though it was very different from the philosophical work, I vii

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Acknowledgments

couldn't help but imagine that it should not be free standing from it. I was fantasizing about these efforts being published in a shared volume because there was a mirror effect between this newly unarchived personal narrative and the philosophical analysis already shelved. Because these two genres have distinct audiences, I was doing either something original or something too strange for publication. And so I thank Martina O'Sullivan, formerly at Rowman & Littlefield International, for enthusiastically supporting my "strange" vision and also thank the anonymous US and UK reviewers who did not see strangeness but novelty and necessity in this project. This reception was one of the only ways I could have reclaimed the project from the rejection pile and prepared it for a diversified audience. I thank Mike Watson, Katie Lane, Jon Rosenberg, Chris Jahns, Patricia Stevenson, and Charlotte Wyatt for their assistance as I developed this project for publication. My late colleague Elisabeth Brinkmann, a theologian in health-care ethics, was one of the first to read my phenomenological analysis. The support and rigorous feedback she gave me remain close to my heart. To those in my College of New Rochelle community who had encouraged me to pursue the project—particularly Ruth Zealand, Elizabeth Spadaccini, Erica Olson-Bang, Anne McKernan, Dennis Ryan, Marga Taylor, and Michelle Jammes—many, many thanks. To the students, colleagues, friends, and extended family with whom I've discussed this project to varying degrees over the years and who have provided me with invaluable support, I thank you so much and hope you find your influence in these pages. My philosophy family keeps me alive. Those who know how I've struggled with this material personally and professionally also have been my lifeline. Maeve O'Donovan, Devonya Havis, Lauren Guilmette, and Joel Michael Reynolds, thank you for reminding me to keep investing back in this work (and especially Joel for describing this project as "bad ass"). Tina, Revekka, and Vanessa, your enthusiasm for this project gave me hope that my work might influence future feminist thinking. Finally, deep gratitude for my sisters—both literal and metaphorical—in blood and in spirit: Richele, Alisa, Lauren, Bernie, Kate, Yvonne, Julie, Monica and Sonja, Mary, Gabrielle (and Annette), Nancy, Adria, Maria, Joan, Clare, Anne, and Ciara, and, especially, my mom and her sisters, Marian and Donna, who always treated me like a sister. There are so many others I cannot name but to whom I am deeply indebted for comforting words and conversations, whether brief and timely or still ongoing and for the long term.

Introduction to the Project

* [DOES-NOT-EQUAL] This project is about disentanglement. It is a theoretical hypothesis disentangling the phenomenon of pregnancy from the phenomenon of childbearing, supported by a narrative of personal experience as best as I could recall it. When you have been raised and groomed to believe that pregnancy is equivalent to—if not also inherently entailing—the phenomena of labor, childbirth, and motherhood wrapped up in a mythos of unconditional love and desire, anything short of these expectations of equivalence becomes a site of harm and humiliation. This project is also intended to be an outright condemnation of our shame and blame culture, especially when it is a gendered phenomenon—an unnecessary bearing-down on women and girls for no other reason than their anatomical differences from men. I would like to identify this project as a feminist phenomenological project—at least in method—yet, ultimately, it is experimental as to what this project might yield. Philosophical analysis is not usually traditional fare for feminism and feminist critique; few philosophers deal in—much less construct narrative in—the form of the graphic novel. 1 That said, much good, feminist work has already been done through the medium of the graphic novel with which I will not be able to compete but, hopefully, only complement. To this point, I place this work among other feminist theorists and philosophers breaking the boundaries down regarding "what counts" for the work of philosophy. ix

X

Introduction

When I became aware of the #shoutyourabortion Twitter hashtag, I was hit by a wave of conflicting feelings as latent memories resurfaced, and yet this provocation also came with a kind of clarity. 2 Up to that point I had an uncritical but functional distinction embedded in my recall of events: although I had experienced a spontaneous miscarriage in my first pregnancy, I had also classified in my mind my third pregnancy as a miscarriage when in fact I had undergone an abortive procedure in what could be considered an abortion clinic. I had—and my family had as well—classified it in this way because this had been a wanted pregnancy and I had it aborted in order to—by all accounts— save my life. What came clearly into view with the #shoutyourabortion thread was that this experience of pregnancy counted as an abortion. The public knowledge or "shouting" of this would mean that I could not hide behind the safety of the "less shameful" reasons for having an abortion. Just because I did not seek it out and had expected my "baby" did not mean that I could maintain distinctions I had comfortably kept any longer. Intellectually—and, to a degree, emotionally—there had been no demand that I grapple with the ambiguity of my situation. As Simone de Beauvoir states it in The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947, part II, §5,1J10), when an "individual lives in a situation of falsehood, the falsehood is violence, tyranny: shall I tell the truth in order to free the victim? It would first be necessary to create a situation of such a kind that the truth might be bearable and that, though losing his [or her] illusions, the deluded individual might again find about him [or her] reasons for hoping." This project is a hopeful one in its negative assessment of pregnancy and in the disentanglement of pregnancy from the bearing of children; it is motivated by a coming-to-terms with falsehoods and illusions that most pregnant women have come to bear. In this project, in grappling with the truth of what had been "my situation," I hope to provide what has been up to now an underdeveloped point of solidarity among women: that, once pregnant, there is a phenomenon of undergoing that is temporal and substantial and of which we will all find ourselves postpartum. Most important to this point of possible solidarity, this is an undergoing given to all pregnancy whether or not a child is born. As Sandra Bartky (1990,97) puts it, "Moral psychology has told us a story, but not the whole story," which prompts me toward the necessary unpacking of the conditions of shame and guilt that come with the per-

Introduction

xi

ceived failure(s) of a "pregnancy that does not lead to the bearing of a child" set in this project and in cooperation with her phenomenology of oppression; for this project, shame and guilt are not "moral emotions." With a project like this, I am imagining how the conditions might be set such that "the truth might be bearable" and I may reevaluate the oppressive and victimizing demands of a misogynist society, starting with my own illusions. This project is an attempt to deinternalize the shame and grief of a compartmentalized and suppressed memory. This is the significance of part I's title, "Miscarriage or Abortion?" as my way of #shoutingmyabortion, as well as the significance of the title of part IV, "Griefwork," as I found myself needing to ask the question: How do you get over what you cannot get over?

HAVING (AND NOT HAVING) "A BABY" My story—the content of the graphic novel—is thick with cisgendered white privilege, especially as it begins with my introduction into pregnant naïveté. In 2006, I was young, married, and employed, and therefore it came time in the script to "start a family." Instead, I was initiated into a quiet community of women who knew how naive and privileged—and damning—that assumption can be. I ran up against a razor's edge where I had assumed there would be nothing but a cushion of joy and accomplishment. This is what I had described to myself as "a privilege that is not a privilege": it is a privilege to embody the political, gender, and social norms of being pregnant. I know there are many women for whom getting pregnant would be a privilege, and one they have been denied. Yet pregnancy without its childbearing function, as with "pregnancy loss," 3 was a complex of deprivileging and alienation from privilege. Still, there was more to be had in this privilege that is not a privilege: I found many other women who knew this contradiction in its painful intimacy 4 —to have been pregnant without the production of a child—such that this, too, became its own, new form of epistemic privilege. In "Being Torn: Toward a Phenomenology of Unwanted Pregnancy," Caroline Lundquist (2008, 136) calls for a more inclusive phenomenology of pregnancy that "gives voice to the multitudes of women who have not chosen their pregnancies," and this project follows that call.

xii

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At the same time, while deviating from Lundquist's project, I will bracket desire and choice regarding pregnancy in my phenomenological approach. Lundquist accounted for phenomena attached to the rejected and denied pregnancy; I suspend that phenomenon to get at the quality of expellation5 given to all pregnancy. That my project is negative toward pregnancy can still be appropriately contextualized in her call for an inclusive phenomenology, as I will argue it, especially as I outline what I call a death-within-the-self—the phenomenal expulsion of expectation—as an existential given to all pregnancy. Lundquist specifically states that "until women have the vocabulary with which to express ambivalent and even negative feelings regarding pregnancies . . . they will continue to suffer in silence. By offering a more inclusive account of pregnancy, feminist phenomenology has the potential to produce such a vocabulary. The lived experience of pregnancy is so radically diverse, and so heavily conditioned, that it behooves feminist philosophers to continue to explore it" (152). What this project opens up to examination is the ontological fact that all pregnancies are open to miscarriage, so I also ask: Can't there be grief in birth? Doesn't all postpartum experience share in the experience of miscarriage in a deep and fundamental way? Added to this project, with this expellation, at least ontologically, grief is on the scene. I will argue this grief as phenomenologically on the scene as a necessary labor that cannot be glossed over and gotten over—calling this necessary labor a griefwork that needs to be done and ought not be done by women alone. Although I experience grief alone in that it alienates me from others, it is not mine and this grief ought not leave me to myself. The idea of griefwork outlined here is not captured in the private, personal exercise of grieving, because the more I allow my grief and "do it," the more, in my alienation, I am isolated by it. It has become the case that "the foetus is integral to their [and her] procreative aims. It is valuable to them because having a child is an important desire of theirs" (Porter 2015, 66). This ontic assumption of childbearing is another kind of alienation from meaningful possibilities, because all meaning of pregnant embodiment rests on the production of a child. Here is where I find the disconnect (the razor's edge) embedded in the promotion of the "successful pregnancy," such that even reproduction as a production renders the force of her need to be a productive (read: valuable) member of society. Yet when pregnancy

Introduction

xiii

leads to normative outcomes of childbearing, at the same time, any alternative to this expectation of outcome is rendered unthinkable and becomes read as a most undesirable situation, fundamentally "unspoken." Analogous to the alienation found in wage work, the productive pregnancy can alienate me from my individual power for collective action—finding myself as a woman among women in having been pregnant—now isolated each from the other. Similarly, in the way that one might think having a job gives one status and protects social standing, it is an artificially induced and manufactured division from those unemployed (yet the harder I work, the more I might desire the alienation than the overcoming of it; 1 believe myself to have found myself in the productivity). Hilde Lindemann (2015, 80) acknowledges this as a kind of "plot" and states that "master narratives . . . serve as hermeneutical resources" and the bearing of the child becomes integral to the story: "The baby is wanted." She notes how "many aspects [of her pregnancy] are [now] purposeful," by "calling the fetus into personhood" (82-83). Iris Marion Young (2005) writes that one of the most important instruments to the advancement of the entanglement—the "plot"—of childbearing with pregnancy is the ultrasound image. 6 It is often the catalyst for the wanted pregnancy, a sign of the fetus, but also part of the setup in which women can fail and in which women may come to grieve. This is why I cannot attend to grief psychologically because I provide no therapeutic relief in this project: I only describe what labor and work must now be required, what leads to its onset and its sustenance. I will defend the idea that grief must be grappled with, as labor-intensive, or else it further entangles us in the plot of pregnant productivity. I will add to this reading an active critique of the idea that the bearing of children is an "accomplishment" because it is attached to the master narrative of neoliberal ideology. Pregnancy, whichever way it goes, when in the function of a misogynist and neoliberal culture, with its corresponding mechanisms and affectations, is a trap, a setup. The failed or unwanted pregnancy becomes a "woman problem," or, worse, "her fault." So here I plan to shut that idea down. Maybe the outcome of this, as it is an experimental project, will be that we do not continue to be divided by paternal and neoliberal interests to play our part in the master narrative of productive pregnancy; perhaps instead solidarity will be found with the woman who has miscarried, as she might recog-

xiv

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nize herself in the woman who has aborted her pregnancy, and again each with the woman who has "successfully" given birth.

NOTES 1. It is fairly recently that the first academic dissertation was delivered as a graphic novel. See Sousanis 2015. 2. Hardy and Kukla (2015, 109) describe this connection better than I do: "The Internet provides an unprecedented and dizzying source of communities united by common experiences, as well as equally unprecedented tools for creating new communities. Women are using these new resources to find ways of getting uptake for and giving shape to narratives that were previously resistant to articulation." 3. I note this in quotes because pregnancy loss is code for miscarriage and stillbirth, but in this project I will argue that all pregnancies lead to a kind of loss—an emptying out of the situation. 4. To this point, Lindemann (2015, 89) states that sometimes we must "leave unspoken the stories that are too painful for her to tell. Some sorrows go too deep for words, and others are too fragmentary or chaotic or fleeting to be captured by words." 5. I call it expellation because of the additional quality to pregnancy superseding the physiological "expulsion" given to all pregnancy and how medicine might define the phenomena of pregnancy and "postpartum." Expellation here includes the phenomenological content of possibility and expectation that comes along with the event of pregnancy termination and independent of fetal status. 6. In her 2003 postscript to "Pregnant Embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation" discussed in part III (and published in Young 2005).

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Index

Page references for the graphic novel are italicized. #shoutyourabortion, x ableism, 179, 185, 187n3, 200,223, 231, 232, 236, 237-41, 244n30 abortion/abortive procedure, x, 74, 78-80, 86-99, 185, 204, 214, 215, 222n34, 228, 236 alienation, xi, xii, xiii, 205, 235 allegory, 179-83, 186, 187n5-6 amniocentesis, 171, 186 analogy, 181, 190, 200, 204, 205 anti-abortionist. See pro-life politics/ rhetoric anxiety, 144, 191, 193, 198-99, 200, 203,205,231,239 Aristotle, 190 autism spectrum, 58, 162 baby/"baby" in utero, xi—xiii, 23, 63, 66,94,144, 180,216,217, 220n23, 225, 233, 234, 236 Bartky, Sandra, x-xi, 223, 236, 238, 243n23, 244n32 Beauvoir, Simone de, x, 191 253

Bechdel, Alison, 240 Blackwood, Sarah, 235 bleeding/blood, 5-7,16-17,19, 21-22,26-31, 33, 39, 44, 54, 61,101-2,105, 120; disorders, 40-42, 66,111 blighted ovum. See miscarriage bracketing (epoche), xii, 191, 193, 197, 205,216 Brennan, Teresa, 190-91 Butler, Judith, 202, 237, 240, 241n7 calendar. See pregnancy, calendar care/concern, 45, 59,162,164, 197, 200, 210, 213-14, 217, 218n9, 220n22, 222n32, 225, 230, 232, 236, 237, 243n22 childbearing/child-rearing, ix, x, xii—xiii, 13, 163,175, 179-80, 182, 183-84, 185-86, 189-95, 199, 200, 201, 204, 206, 207, 209, 210-12,213,215,216, 223,224, 229, 230-31, 232-33, 234-35, 236, 239, 240, 241n2

254

Index

childbirth. See childbearing/childrearing; pregnancy children (daughter/son), xii, 10-15, 43, 45, 57-60, 75, 136,138-43, 154, 155, 162, 164, 175, 177, 178, 180, 184, 206-7,214, 221n27, 228, 230 choice(s)/choice making, xii, 186, 188nl0, 215, 221n28 Cixous, Hélène, 225-26, 228, 239 concern. See care/concern D&E (dilation and evacuation), 79, 86-99 Dabrowski, Jill, 230-31 Dasein, 197, 198, 200, 202, 203, 215, 218nn8-9, 219nl8, 220n21 daughter. See children death, 168, 180, 182, 192, 194, 212, 213, 216, 217,219nl8, 220n22, 224, 225, 228, 229, 230, 232, 235 death-within-the-self, xii, 196-206, 212-13, 215, 216, 229, 230, 232, 233 depression, 144, 150-51, 239, 242n15 Derrida, Jacques, 207, 208, 211, 219nl9, 227, 243n25, 244n34 desire, ix, xii, xiii, 179, 185, 187, 195, 199, 206-7, 208-9, 213, 223, 226, 232-33, 234, 235, 240 disentanglement, ix, x, 182, 189, 191,204, 223,229, 239 embodiment, xi, xii, 178, 179, 182, 185, 187, 189, 192, 193, 194, 195, 199, 200, 202, 204-13, 216-17, 220n25, 221n29, 229-30, 232-33, 234, 236 epigenetics, 191, 217n3 epistemic injustice/reparation, 180, 223, 230, 238

epistemic privilege, xi, 9, 181, 187n4, 209,212, 213, 221n28 epoche. See bracketing everyday/everydayness. See ontic exceptionality/exceptional situation, 194, 196, 198, 199, 200, 202, 203, 205, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 220n25, 230, 232, 240 existential/existentialist, xii, 186, 189, 191, 192, 194, 197, 198, 199-200, 202, 203, 204, 205-6, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211-13, 21516, 218n5, 218nn9-10, 219nl8, 225, 230, 232-33, 236, 239, 241nl, 241n7 expellation, xii, xivn5, 186, 200, 208, 209,215, 223, 224, 232, 233, 238 failure, xi, xiii, 101, 149,153, 179, 183, 184, 185, 186, 189, 192, 193, 195,212,215,216,217, 225, 229, 231,236, 238, 240 father/fatherhood. See men fecundity, 206-13 feminine/feminized, 178, 183, 192, 206, 208, 239, 243n23 feminist methodology/ phenomenology, ix, xii, 183, 216-17, 239-40 fetus/foetus, xii, xiii, 39, 205, 210, 214-15,216,217, 222n34, 233, 234, 239 Firestone, Shulamith, 183-84 Frye, Marilyn, 189, 226 Gay, Roxanne, 239 genetic counseling, 171, 185-86 girls. See women grappling with ambiguity/grief, x, xiii, 178, 182, 235,236 Greene, Maxine, 177-78

Index grief, xii, xiii, 124, 155, 182, 186, 217, 221n29, 241nn3-4, 241n9, 244nn29-30, 244n33; baking, 141-42; griefwork, xii, 223-41, 241n5, 241n8 Gruen, Lori, 224-25 Guenther, Lisa, 191, 193, 199, 218n6, 218nl0, 220n20, 239 guilt/guiltedness, xi, 132,199-200, 202, 211, 218n9, 233, 234-35, 236 Heidegger, Martin, 196-98, 200, 202-3,204, 213, 218nn8-9, 219nnl7-18, 220n21, 222n32 Hong, Grace Kyungwon, 224, 229, 241nl Hood, Ann, 228 hospitality, 207, 208, 209, 211, 243n25 host/hostage, 205, 207-13, 215, 216, 219nl9, 220n23, 221n30, 232-33, 234 infertility/nonproductive fertility, 154, 193, 199,216, 236, 244n33 Irigaray, Luce, 206-7, 208, 210 Jaeggi, Rahel, 235 jouissance. See self/selfhood

255

Lindemann, Hilde, xiii, xivn4 love/self-love, ix, 180, 187, 205, 230-31 Lundquist, Caroline, xi-xii, 243n21 Marsh, Sarah, 239 maternity/motherhood, ix, 154, 178, 180, 185, 190, 192, 196,210-11, 213,214,217, 221n29, 230-31, 233, 235, 239. See also women McCain, John, 129, 185 medical care/medicalization, xivn5, xivn7, 20-25, 31-^2, 45-54,

61-67, 78-94, 107-21, 148-51, 171, 173-75, 185, 189, 191, 193, 195, 198, 205,212,217, 230, 231, 234, 241n2 men, ix, 164, 180, 185, 206, 210, 212, 223, 234, 236, 239, 244n30, 244n32 metanoia, 181, 186 miscarriage, x, xii, xivn3, 3-7, 9, 144, 154, 163, 177, 178, 180, 186, 187n4, 189-217, 218n4, 219nl6, 223-26, 228, 230, 232, 234, 239 misogyny/misogynoir, xi, xiii, 179, 200, 219nl2, 223,231,232, 244n30 Monbiot, George, 184-85, 188nl0 Mullin, Amy, 214-15

Kittay, Eva, 229-30, 236, 242nl4 labor, xii, xiii, 182, 184, 185, 186, 191, 192, 194, 209, 210, 212, 215, 216, 224, 225-27, 230, 233, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241nl, 243n23 Lévinas, Emmanuel, 195, 196, 199, 200-204, 205-7, 208, 210, 212, 218nl0, 2 1 9 n l l , 219nl7, 219nl9, 220nn21-22, 221n26, 221nn3031, 243n25, 244n34

narcissism, 205, 229, 243n23 neoliberalism, xiii, 179, 181, 183-86, 187n3, 188nl0, 190, 200, 224, 226, 231-32, 236, 238, 239 Nieves, A'Driane, 232 normal/natural, 179, 180,183, 186, 190, 191, 192-93, 199, 211, 224, 226, 233, 235, 240 ontic (everyday/everydayness), xii, 177, 189, 191, 192, 193, 196-97,

256

Index

199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 210, 218n5, 226, 237, 238 ontology/ontological, xii, 186, 191— 92, 195, 196, 197-99, 200, 201-2, 203, 207, 218n8, 228, 233 Palin, Sarah, 129,131, 185 paternalism/patronization, xiii, 18586, 197,217, 239 personal/personhood, ix-xiii, 8, 86, 163, 178, 184, 190, 196, 203, 210, 214-15, 216, 229-36, 243n25 Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack, 214, 222n34 phenomenology/phenomenological, ix, xi—xii, xivn5, 178, 181, 189217, 223,229-36, 238 philosophy/philosophers, ix, xii, 177-86, 187n2, 187nn6-7, 190, 224, 229-36 Plato, 180-81, 187nn5-7, 218n7 Pollock, Delia, 235 Porter, Lindsey, xii, 233-34, 239 postpartum, x, xii, xivn5, 185, 204, 209, 213, 223-24, 230-31, 232, 235, 242nl5, 242nl7 Prasad, Madhava, 183 precarity/precariousness, 213, 224, 228, 232, 237 pregnancy, ix-xiv, xivn5, 179-80, 186, 187n4, 189-95, 199-200, 202, 204-6, 207-13,215-17, 218n3, 218n5, 223, 230, 232-33, 234-35, 236, 239-40, 241n2; calendar, 18,193,234; loss/ failed, x-xiv, xivn3, 3-7,144, 178, 179, 185, 189, 192-94, 196, 198, 209,211-12,214,216, 217, 221n27, 224, 229, 240 (see also miscarriage; stillbirth); loss support group, 152-55; privilege of, xi, 211, 213, 217, 219nl6,

221n28; as unwanted or wanted, xiii, 92-93, 196, 200, 204, 208-9, 213, 214, 220n23, 230-31, 243n21 pregnant naïveté, xi, 182, 205 privilege, xi, 178, 183, 194, 209-10, 230, 232. See also epistemic privilege; pregnancy, privilege of privilege that is not a privilege. See epistemic privilege productivity/productive, xi, xii-xiii, 183, 185, 190, 191, 192, 204, 206, 2 1 0 - 1 1 , 2 1 4 , 2 1 6 , 224, 243n20 pro-life politics/rhetoric, 97-98, 129, 178, 185, 190, 191-92, 198, 213-16, 236 relief (ontic, therapeutic), xiii, 193, 204, 2 0 5 , 2 0 9 , 2 1 3 reproduction, xii-xiii, 178, 183, 191, 193, 200, 212, 216, 218n3, 224, 229, 233, 239 self/selfhood, 191, 194, 196, 199, 201, 202, 204, 207, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 220n21, 225, 226, 228, 235, 236, 239 shame/shamefulness, x-xi, 199, 236, 240; culture, ix, 179, 186, 200, 232 Silverman, Rachel, 221n27, 229 solidarity, x, xiii-xiv, 182, 195, 216, 225, 231, 242n9, 242nl2 son. See children sonogram. See ultrasound Stabile, Carol A., 215 sterilization. See tubal ligation stillbirth, xivn3,144, 192 teleology Helos, 186, 188nll, 189-95, 197, 200, 204, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 212, 2 1 6 , 2 1 7 n l , 220n23, 234, 240

Index trace/tracework, 195-96, 204, 205, 212, 226, 229, 232 trimester. See pregnancy, calendar tubal ligation, 174-75, 177 ultrasound (sonogram), xiii, 5, 7, 21-25, 62-64, 88, 110, 182, 210, 214-15,217, 233,234 utility/utilitarianism, 190, 230, 237

257

women, ix, 144, 178-86, 189-95, 198,200,210,212,213-17, 218n4, 221n27, 222n35, 223, 225, 226, 230-32, 235, 236, 237-39, 240-41, 241n2, 242nl5, 243n21, 244nn32-33 Young, Iris Marion, xiii, 192, 194, 205, 209-10, 217, 230, 233, 237

About the Author

Jennifer Scuro has a BFA in painting and sculpture from St. John's University in New York, an MA in philosophy from Boston College, and a PhD in philosophy from the New School for Social Research. She is associate professor of philosophy and former chair of the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at the College of New Rochelle in New York. She continues to work on her art while teaching undergraduate courses in global and applied ethics, feminist theory, and environmental studies. She wrote the final chapter, "Theory Can Heal," for the anthology Why Race and Gender Still Matter (2014). Her most recent research is in disability studies, and Lexington Books (a division of Rowman & Littlefield) will publish her forthcoming book, Addressing Ableism: Philosophical Meditations through Disability Studies.

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