ORCID

Abstract

REVIEWS“In this original and conceptually sophisticated project Middlemiss handles incredibly difficult interview material with extraordinary sensitivity and care. She does not shy away from difficult details but makes these often very raw stories more understandable through serious analytic work.” • Linda L. Layne, University of Cambridge“This is an excellent book … As someone working in the field of reproduction/family studies (though not specifically on pregnancy loss), this book has expanded my thinking regarding how legal, medical, kinship systems and cultures come together in defining our understandings of life/death, personhood and relatedness.” • Leah Gilman, University of Manchester“This is an excellent, well-written, well researched manuscript on an important and timely issue. The book successfully introduces nuance, contestation, and diversity into constructions of personhood in the English context through detailed exploration of second trimester pregnancy loss.” • Susie Kilshaw, University College LondonDESCRIPTIONTracing women’s experiences of miscarriage and termination for foetal anomaly in the second trimester, before legal viability, shows how such events are positioned as less ‘real’ or significant when the foetal being does not, or will not, survive. Invisible Labours describes the reproductive politics of this category of pregnancy loss in England. It shows how second trimester pregnancy loss produces specific medical and social experiences, revealing an underlying teleological ontology of pregnancy. Some women then resist these interpretations when they understand their pregnancy through kinship with the unborn baby.

Publication Date

2024-02-02

Volume

54

ISBN

9781805392576

Keywords

pregnancy loss, abortion, miscarriage, reproductive politics, second trimester, termination of pregnancy, TOPFA, TFMR, obstetric violence, discipline, ontological politics, resistance, kinship, personhood, pregnancy, England, UK

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