台灣的道德先鋒：焦慮、產檢選擇與責任的矛盾

This paper aims to explore women's experience of prenatal screening and testing (PST), and also how these experiences affect women's pregnancy and decision-making. According to an official survey, 97.21% of Taiwanese pregnant women underwent PST in 2008 (Department of Health, Executive Yuan, 2009: 49). From conducting ethnographic observations, interviews with pregnant women and couples, and collecting participants' drawings about what PST is, I found that my participants experienced much anxiety during their pregnancy. I explain this in the context of routine medical practices that construct women as responsible decision‐making subjects, which thus stirs their anxiety by invoking the spectre of a disabled child or of aborting a desired child. As American feminist Rayna Rapp suggests, this positions women as 'moral pioneers' who stand at the moral frontier of our society to decide what kind of children can enter society. Following Rapp's 'moral pioneer,' I use the term 'Taiwanese moral pioneer' to suggest that in Taiwan women's decision-makingare entangled with health care policy, the concept of you sheng (superior birth), medical practices, medical professionals, and these women's families. I see these as material-semiotic actors participating in an ＂ontological choreography＂, which is a term coined by Charis Thompson and describes the heterogeneous practices within medical practices. To examine these choreographic enactments, this paper provides accounts of how PST is practiced, and also of its ontological enacting. In the end, the paper contributes to our understanding of the complexity of PST and also its paradox, which is enfolded within Taiwanese women’s anxiety, responsibility and decision-making together.