Enacting Pregnant Women, Enacting the Foetus Prenatal Screening and Testing in Taiwan

This two-year research project aims at finishing the English manuscript of a research book with the title, Enacting Pregnant Women, Enacting the Foetus: Prenatal Screening and Testing in Taiwan. This project is based on my PhD thesis, published papers and conference papers. Much of the data has already been collected, but some new data will also be required, especially data related to marriage migrant’s experiences of prenatal screening and testing (PST). At the core of this research is the point that PST does much more than just examining the health of the foetus and the health of the pregnant woman. The project investigates the experiences of pregnant women in Taiwan as they navigate and negotiate PST. Based on ethnographic observations in four clinical prenatal care sites, interviews with medical professionals, pregnant women and couples, and participants’ drawings of PST, this project explores how the experience of PST affects women’s relations to the foetuses, medical professionals, PST technologies and their families. Employing Donna Haraway’s and actor-network theory’s material-semiotic approaches, I show how women, the foetus, medical practices and PST technologies are brought into a relational web shaping and reshaping the connection between the human and non-humans actors involved. A central concern of the project is to ask: what are the implications of PST for Taiwanese society as a latecomer country when it comes to the use of PST technologies and practices. To discuss this, the project is divided into three parts. First part ‘Local Politics of Prenatal Care ‘ traces the local politics of prenatal care to explore the health and population policy in Taiwan. Second part ‘Technoscientific Practice and Women’s Choice’ examines the technoscientific practice and women’s reproductive choice. Third part ‘Globalisation and the Fluidity of PST in a Latecomer society’ analyses the fluid and global nature of PST as PST unfolds in the latecomer society of Taiwan. This global and fluid nature of PST will then be seen in relation to a post-colonial technoscience approach to Taiwanese women, marriage migrants, and the fluidity of technology. It thus contributes to and extends international feminist technoscience studies and post-colonial technoscience by bringing Taiwanese women’s experiences and an ANT approach to feminist discussions of prenatal screening and testing.