ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the mobilisation of reproductive genetics through surveillance medicine. Focusing on a study of European experts, it describes the specific cultural spaces of surveillance medicine in which experts shape their claims about reproductive genetics and how these claims mark reproductive time for pregnant women. For pregnant women, ‘reflexivity’ or ‘making space to make ethical decisions’ emerges as an important piece of reproductive time. The chapter focuses on a comparison of experts’ claims and identifying over-arching cultural themes country by country. These cultural themes include: thalassaemia in Greece, abortion in the Netherlands, ethics in the UK and care for pregnant women in Finland. At any given moment in time, the perceived wisdom about the spread of thalassaemia’s corporeal volume in Greece will determine the sorts of technologies that are practised on ‘their’ pregnant women. In the Netherlands, the politics of abortion shaped experts’ concerns, as they made a distinction between ‘normal’ and ‘genetic abortions’.
