Gestating times: Women’s accounts of the temporalities of pregnancies that end in abortion in England

TY - JOUR

T1 - Gestating times

T2 - Women’s accounts of the temporalities of pregnancies that end in abortion in England

AU - Beynon-Jones, Sian Maeve

N1 - © 2016 The Author. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for SHIL.

PY - 2017/7/5

Y1 - 2017/7/5

N2 - Tensions between the ‘clock time’ of medicine and the embodied times of its subjects are central to feminist writing concerning Western obstetric practice. In this article, I expand the focus of this literature by addressing the temporal dynamics of another site of reproductive healthcare: abortion provision. Echoing obstetric accounts of birth, time in legal, healthcare and social scientific discourse on abortion is routinely conceptualised as a finite resource contained within the pregnant/foetal body, which can be measured using clocks and calendars. I argue that women's interview accounts of their experiences of ending their pregnancies offer opportunities for critical reflection on this characterisation of pregnancy as linear ‘gestational time’. First, participants in this study re-position the significance of gestational time by articulating its embodied meaning. Second, they provide alternative accounts of the temporality of pregnancy as a process which emerges through, and is disrupted by, the dynamics of socio-material relations. The article considers the broader implications of women's accounts of pregnancy times for legal, healthcare and social scientific accounts of ‘later’ abortion.

AB - Tensions between the ‘clock time’ of medicine and the embodied times of its subjects are central to feminist writing concerning Western obstetric practice. In this article, I expand the focus of this literature by addressing the temporal dynamics of another site of reproductive healthcare: abortion provision. Echoing obstetric accounts of birth, time in legal, healthcare and social scientific discourse on abortion is routinely conceptualised as a finite resource contained within the pregnant/foetal body, which can be measured using clocks and calendars. I argue that women's interview accounts of their experiences of ending their pregnancies offer opportunities for critical reflection on this characterisation of pregnancy as linear ‘gestational time’. First, participants in this study re-position the significance of gestational time by articulating its embodied meaning. Second, they provide alternative accounts of the temporality of pregnancy as a process which emerges through, and is disrupted by, the dynamics of socio-material relations. The article considers the broader implications of women's accounts of pregnancy times for legal, healthcare and social scientific accounts of ‘later’ abortion.

KW - abortion

KW - feminism

KW - pregnancy

KW - time

KW - Decision Making

KW - Women's Health

KW - Narration

KW - Humans

KW - England

KW - Pregnancy

KW - Feminism

KW - Time Factors

KW - Adult

KW - Female

KW - Interviews as Topic

KW - Qualitative Research

KW - Abortion, Induced/psychology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85006265903&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/1467-9566.12522

DO - 10.1111/1467-9566.12522

M3 - Article

C2 - 27910107

VL - 39

SP - 832

EP - 846

JO - Sociology of Health and Illness

JF - Sociology of Health and Illness

SN - 0141-9889

IS - 6

ER -