76 research outputs found
Book reviews
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45602/1/11199_2004_Article_BF00289693.pd
Making muslim babies: Ivf and gamete donation in sunni versus shiâa islam
Medical anthropological research on science, biotechnology, and religion has focused on the âlocal moral worldsâ of men and women as they make difficult decisions regarding their health and the beginnings and endings of human life. This paper focuses on the local moral worlds of infertile Muslims as they attempt to make, in the religiously correct fashion, Muslim babies at in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics in Egypt and Lebanon. As early as 1980, authoritative fatwas issued from Egyptâs famed Al-Azhar University suggested that IVF and similar technologies are permissible as long as they do not involve any form of third-party donation (of sperm, eggs, embryos, or uteruses). Since the late 1990s, however, divergences in opinion over third-party gamete donation have occurred between Sunni and Shiâite Muslims, with Iranâs leading ayatollah permitting gamete donation under certain conditions. This Iranian fatwa has had profound implications for the country of Lebanon, where a Shiâite majority also seeks IVF services. Based on three periods of ethnographic research in Egyptian and Lebanese IVF clinics, this paper explores official and unofficial religious discourses surrounding the practice of IVF and third-party donation in the Muslim world, as well as the gender implications of gamete donation for Muslim marriages
Re-visioning ultrasound through women's accounts of pre-abortion care in England
Feminist scholarship has demonstrated the importance of sustained critical engagement with ultrasound visualizations of pregnant womenâs bodies. In response to portrayals of these images as âobjectiveâ forms of knowledge about the fetus, it has drawn attention to the social practices through which the meanings of ultrasound are produced. This article makes a novel contribution to this project by addressing an empirical context that has been neglected in the existing feminist literature concerning ultrasound, namely, its use during pregnancies that women decide to terminate. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with women concerning their experiences of abortion in England, I explore how the meanings of having an ultrasound prior to terminating a pregnancy are discursively constructed. I argue that womenâs accounts complicate dominant representations of ultrasound and that in so doing, they multiply the subject positions available to pregnant women
Rayna Rapp, Constructing amniocentesis : maternal and medical discourses
Rapp Rayna. Rayna Rapp, Constructing amniocentesis : maternal and medical discourses. In: DiplÎmées, n°146, 1988. France-USA. Comparaison des réactions de nos sociétés devant le progrÚs des connaissances et des techniques en biogénétique de la transmission de la vie : Séminaire AFFDU-Currier 3-4 mars 1988. p. 243
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