Rethinking Choice: Potential Pregnancies, High-Tech Mothering and Reproductive DemocracyPerin Gürel
Notes
[1] Thompson's Making Parents indirectly provides several possible answers by noting the liberal American emphasis on privacies and the importance American political rhetoric places on the practice of law (207).
[2] Two notable exceptions that call for more studies are the lesbian mothers and the women of color who reference social movements as influential in reaching their final decision, as opposed to biological drives (16-17). Hertz is aware of this blind spot and acknowledges it in her methodological appendix. She also notes that in the case of non-heterosexual women, the ideology of compulsory motherhood is inapplicable. In fact, "lesbian women had to dismantle the view of lesbians as sexual but not procreative women" (17).
[3]This is an example of what Charis Thompson calls "strategic naturalization" (13).
[4]In certain ways, this book itself is a part of the baby market: its Amazon.com customers include several single women who have conceived or plan to conceive through artificial insemination.
Perin Gürel is a graduate student in American Studies at Yale University. She holds a B.A. in American Studies and English from UC Berkeley, where she worked as a teaching assistant and studied with folklorist Alan Dundes.