Beaulieu A, Lippman A
Science and Technology Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Women Health. 1995;23(3):59-74. doi: 10.1300/J013v23n03_04.
The use of biomedical testing and genetic counselling is usually framed as something an individual woman chooses, with little consideration given to the context in which women make these choices. In order to understand something of the context in which women (35 and over) undergo prenatal diagnostic tests, we have surveyed the contents of 10 major women's magazines. We found that the stories told about the "older" pregnant woman and the risks attached to her pregnancy are highly selective. The dominant rhetoric used in these narratives suggests that women "need" to be informed of the facts of being pregnant when older (through reading magazine articles), that this need incurs a further need to find out the state of the fetus (through biomedical intervention), and that the pregnant woman can meet these needs by "choosing" prenatal diagnosis. These results illustrate how a "need" for prenatal testing gets created and suggest that to "choose" to be tested may be to partake of, not challenge, the mainstream biomedical assumptions about how the "older" pregnant woman will and should behave.
生物医学检测和遗传咨询的使用通常被视为个体女性的一种选择，而很少考虑女性做出这些选择的背景。为了了解35岁及以上女性进行产前诊断测试的背景情况，我们调查了10种主要女性杂志的内容。我们发现，有关“高龄”孕妇及其怀孕风险的报道具有高度的选择性。这些报道中使用的主导性言辞表明，女性“需要”（通过阅读杂志文章）了解高龄怀孕的事实，这种需求进而引发了进一步了解胎儿状况的需求（通过生物医学干预），并且孕妇可以通过“选择”产前诊断来满足这些需求。这些结果说明了产前检测的“需求”是如何产生的，并表明“选择”接受检测可能是参与，而非挑战，关于“高龄”孕妇将会和应该如何表现的主流生物医学假设。
