Mothering cancer: Maternal subjectivity and the status of the fetus in a case of cervical ectopic pregnancy

Abstract

The ways through which we define fetuses and pregnant women has consequences in matters of abortion rights, in care following pregnancy loss and in the emotional experience of loss itself. Considering that maternal-fetal body, fetus status and maternal subjectivity are ontologically ambiguous, socially and technologically constructed and that they endure political tensions, this autoethnographic reflection on my cervical ectopic pregnancy focuses on how diverse medical-technological devices formed a semiotic and material field that modified my subjectivity making and unmaking a mother and transformed the status of personhood of my embryo from a quasi-child into a sort of cancer. By differentiating maternal status from maternal subjectivity, I also show how in western societies the maternal status of pregnant women is strictly linked to a pregnant body and to an existing and living fetus or embryo, but in the critical event of pregnancy loss, maternal subjectivity can follow other paths, paths that lack social recognition.