Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Bucknell University, One Dent Drive, Lewisburg, PA 17837, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2013 Sep;92:124-31. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.05.024. Epub 2013 Jun 4.
Recent reports by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have decried the high rate of fetal mortality in the contemporary United States. Much of the data about fetal and infant deaths, as well as other poor pregnancy outcomes, are tabulated and tracked through vital statistics. In this article, I demonstrate how notions of fetal death became increasingly tied to the surveillance of maternal bodies through the tabulating and tracking of vital statistics in the middle part of the twentieth century. Using a historical analysis of the revisions to the United States Standard Certificate of Live Birth, and the United States Standard Report of Fetal Death, I examine how the categories of analysis utilized in these documents becomes integrally linked to contemporary ideas about fetal and perinatal death, gestational age, and prematurity. While it is evident that there are relationships between maternal behavior and birth outcomes, in this article I interrogate the ways in which the surveillance of maternal bodies through vital statistics has naturalized these relationships.
最近疾病控制与预防中心的报告谴责了当代美国高比例的胎儿死亡率。大量关于胎儿和婴儿死亡以及其他不良妊娠结局的数据都是通过生命统计数据进行列表和跟踪的。在本文中，我展示了如何通过在二十世纪中叶对生命统计数据的列表和跟踪，将胎儿死亡的概念与对产妇身体的监测越来越紧密地联系起来。我通过对美国活产标准证书和美国胎儿死亡标准报告的修订进行历史分析，考察了这些文件中使用的分析类别如何与当代关于胎儿和围产期死亡、胎龄和早产的观念紧密联系在一起。虽然很明显，产妇行为和生育结果之间存在着联系，但在本文中，我质疑了通过生命统计数据对产妇身体进行监测如何使这些关系变得自然而然。
