‘We view that as contraceptive failure’: Containing the ‘multiplicity’ of contraception and abortion within Scottish reproductive healthcare

AbstractWithin contemporary Scottish policy guidance, abortion is routinely configured as evidence of a resolvable problem with the healthcare provision of contraception. This article draws on 42 semi-structured interviews with Scottish health professionals conducted during 2007–2008, in order to explore how, and in what form, realities of contraception/abortion are sustained within abortion practice. In addition to providing empirical insights concerning this sociologically neglected aspect of reproductive healthcare, it demonstrates how a novel conceptual approach could be used to develop existing social scientific analyses of the provision of techniques of fertility prevention. Science and Technology Studies (STS) has highlighted the importance of studying the complex socio-material practices through which realities are enacted (or ‘performed’). Mobilising this insight, my analysis illustrates the complex socio-material work required to enact abortion as evidence of a ‘problem’ with contraception that is resolvable within the healthcare consultation. This work, I argue, renders visible the ontologically ‘multiple’ (Mol, 2002) nature of contraception/abortion, with important implications for both social science and policy approaches to these techniques of fertility prevention

Expertise and Scottish abortion practice: understanding healthcare professionals’ accounts

Current UK abortion law has been subjected to extensive feminist critique because of the relationships that it constructs between healthcare professionals (HCPs) and women with unwanted pregnancies. The law allows HCPs to opt out of abortion provision on the grounds of conscience, implying that it is not something which they have an automatic duty to provide to their patients. It also gives doctors the authority to decide whether an abortion can legally take place, thus suggesting that women’s reproductive decisions should be regulated by medical ‘experts’. However, little is known about how HCPs who are involved in twenty-first century UK abortion provision define their relationships with their patients in practice. My thesis makes an important empirical contribution by responding to this gap in the literature and exploring the subjectivities which these HCPs construct for themselves and their pregnant patients. I address this issue by analysing Scottish HCPs’ interview accounts of their involvement in (or conscientious objection to) abortion provision, using conceptual tools provided by Science and Technology Studies (STS) and feminist theory. I begin by utilising HCPs’ discussions of the practice of ‘conscientious objection’ as a means of exploring how they define the boundaries of their professional responsibilities for abortion provision. I then move on to address HCPs’ accounts of their interactions with women requesting abortion, and analyse how they define legitimate or ‘expert’ knowledge in this context. A key conclusion of the thesis is that HCPs do concede some authority to women with unwanted pregnancies; this is revealed by their reluctance to suggest that they have the right to prevent individual women from accessing abortion. At the same time, I argue that the legitimacy granted to pregnant women by HCPs is limited. My analysis reveals that, in constructing knowledge claims about the use of abortion, HCPs co-produce troubling definitions of femininity, socio-economic class, age and ethnicity. I develop a strong critique of this process, and highlight its potential implications for women’s experiences in the abortion clinic. However, I conclude that this situation cannot be addressed by simply attacking the practices of HCPs as individuals. Rather, it is necessary to understand and critique the limitations of the discursive context in which HCPs are working, because this context shapes the subjectivities available to pregnant women and HCPs

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 women’s bodies. In response to portrayals of these images as “objective” 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 women’s accounts complicate dominant representations of ultrasound and that in so doing, they multiply the subject positions available to pregnant women

Chapter Introduction

In bringing together this collection on law’s relationship with time, our concern has been to register an increasing commitment among scholars across disciplines to shift such patterns of engagement. Our own research over the past few years has been preoccupied with the question of law’s temporalities, drawing on a range of critical resources to investigate, through empirical research, the coproduction of legal and temporal norms, subjectivities and political ontologies. In our related efforts to create an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on law and time,2 we have noted a distinct openness to questions of law, regulation and legality from social sciences and humanities scholars working on temporality, on the one hand (e.g. Adkins, 2012; Amoore, 2013; de Goede, 2015; Mitropoulos, 2012; Opitz et al., 2015), and an incisive conceptual and methodological interdisciplinarity among critical and socio-legal scholars, on the other (e.g. Cooper, 2013; Cornell, 1990; Craven et al., 2006; Douglas, 2011; Fitzpatrick, 2013; Keenan, 2014; Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2013; Valverde, 2015; van Marle, 2003). Critical approaches to linear time and attention to law’s shaping of time in diverse forms and through multiple techniques have animated research across disciplines. We hope that the present collection will highlight these shared concerns, fostering the cross-fertilisation of ideas and methods and further developing conversations on law and time between socio-legal scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, historians and others

Chapter Introduction

In bringing together this collection on law’s relationship with time, our concern has been to register an increasing commitment among scholars across disciplines to shift such patterns of engagement. Our own research over the past few years has been preoccupied with the question of law’s temporalities, drawing on a range of critical resources to investigate, through empirical research, the coproduction of legal and temporal norms, subjectivities and political ontologies. In our related efforts to create an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on law and time,2 we have noted a distinct openness to questions of law, regulation and legality from social sciences and humanities scholars working on temporality, on the one hand (e.g. Adkins, 2012; Amoore, 2013; de Goede, 2015; Mitropoulos, 2012; Opitz et al., 2015), and an incisive conceptual and methodological interdisciplinarity among critical and socio-legal scholars, on the other (e.g. Cooper, 2013; Cornell, 1990; Craven et al., 2006; Douglas, 2011; Fitzpatrick, 2013; Keenan, 2014; Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2013; Valverde, 2015; van Marle, 2003). Critical approaches to linear time and attention to law’s shaping of time in diverse forms and through multiple techniques have animated research across disciplines. We hope that the present collection will highlight these shared concerns, fostering the cross-fertilisation of ideas and methods and further developing conversations on law and time between socio-legal scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, historians and others

Mutational analysis of the oxidoreductase ERp57 reveals the importance of the two central residues in the redox motif

AbstractThe oxidoreductase ERp57 is involved in the formation and breaking of disulfide bonds in assembling proteins within the environment of the endoplasmic reticulum. Site-directed mutants of the redox-active Cys-Gly-His-Cys motif within an isolated ERp57 sub-domain have been studied. Whereas mutation of either cysteine residue abolished reductase activity, substitution of the central residues resulted in retention of partial activity. Alkylation studies indicated that the central residue mutants retained the normal disulfide bond in the motif, whereas this disulfide bond became more resistant to reduction following addition of a third residue into the redox motif, demonstrating an optimum spacing within the redox-active motif of ERp57