Biomedical subjects
B K Rothman
Publications and source records attributed to B K Rothman.
The daughters of time on the paths to midwifery.
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Ideology and technology: the social context of procreative technology.
Biomedical practices and research in procreation are shaped by three ideologies deeply rooted in American society: patriarchy with its control of women's bodies in the interest of men's procreative concerns and with its focus on 'seeds' and therefore genetics; technology as an ideology of efficiency, productivity, rationality, and control; and capitalism both as an ideology and as a practice, a mechanism that markets technologies of procreation.
The active management of physicians.
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Commentary: women feel social and economic pressures to abort abnormal fetuses.
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Reproductive technology and the commodification of life.
This paper suggests that the key unifying concept in the development and application of new reproduction technology has been the increasing commodification of life--treating people and parts of people as marketable commodities. This commodification process is made most dramatically clear in (1) prenatal diagnosis, in which the fetus is treated as a product subject to quality control measures and women are treated as producers without emotional tie to their products and (2) in so-called "surrogacy" arrangements in which an actual price tag is placed on pregnancy, and women sell both their "labor" and their "product."
On the question of Baby Doe.
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Beyond risks and rates in obstetric care. 1.
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The products of conception: the social context of reproductive choices.
This paper addresses the changing ideology regarding reproduction, an evolving American, and potentially worldwide, value system regarding children and parenthood. Children are increasingly being seen as products, and the new technology of reproduction, including the sale of reproductive material and services and especially prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion, encourage this commodification of the fetus. While the new technology does indeed offer new choices, it also creates new structures and new limitations on choice. In the contemporary American social structure, these choices are inevitably couched in terms of production and commodification, and thus do not offer individuals genuine choice or control.
The social construction of birth.
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Anatomy of a compromise: nurse-midwifery and the rise of the birth center.
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Childbirth management and medical monopoly: midwifery as (almost) a profession.
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Women, providers, and control.
Childbirth in America is dominated by a management perspective that emphasizes the efficient removal of a fetus from a woman's body. This article discusses the obvious and not so obvious ways that routine American management of childbirth systematically strips women of power and control. It is argued that, although providers may be well-meaning and nurturing in their care of childbearing women, their approach is most often nurturing to weakness, rather than strength.
Not all that glitters is gold.
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