Dead Mothers, Live Births

• In Event: Diagnosing Death: Critical STS Perspectives - I

Abstract

With advancements in resuscitative and reproductive technologies, it is now possible to sustain a pregnancy in a brain-dead body for weeks or months at a time. Legal and philosophical reflections on these "postmortem pregnancies" have so far recognized their alignment with discourses of sacrificial motherhood, pronatalism, and fetal personhood. However, this has led to an incongruity in ethical debates across science and cultural theory, because healthcare workers in this area consistently feel that the brain death of the woman and medicine's obligation to "preserve life" necessitate saving the fetus, even before the age of viability/legal personhood. Using insights from feminist theory, this paper addresses how the fetishization of biological life provides moral cover for physicians who reify women's role as fetal incubators and who legitimize their actions through appeals to "physiology not philosophy." I suggest that a cultural and scientific remediation of what constitutes "biological life" may be a new avenue for intervention in medical policy and practice.

Author

• Lindsey Breitwieser, Indiana University Department of Gender Studies