ABSTRACT
Prenatal testing artificially separates the unique experience of pregnancy into social and biological parts, replaces how a woman feels and what she feels about being pregnant with what a biomedical procedure tells her she should feel, and requires her to adhere to test schedules rather than to her own biological and social clocks. Researchers claim that prenatal diagnosis was first used for conditions generally regarded by physicians as serious and having no effective treatments. By contrast, almost all women experience another form of prenatal testing when they receive what has become a seemingly ordinary part of prenatal care: ultrasound examination. The availability and use of prenatal screening and testing in themselves change the way women experience pregnancy and maternity, the way they conceptualize children and childbearing, and the way they seek solutions to health and social problems.
