ABSTRACT
Male cultural constructions of female fertility in North Bali relate to the womb and its products: uterine blood is invested with negative significance, foetuses are positive. The relatively recent introduction of cosmopolitan medicine may modify this view. Biomedical constructions of maternity are more equivocal about the value of foetuses, and indifferent to the meaning of uterine blood. However, biomedical ideologies centering around women's reproductive health have, in the Indonesian context, assumed the right to intrude upon women's reproductive autonomy and may compound local prejudices against women's blood.
