Research Topic Title: Invisible Labours: The reproductive politics of second trimester pregnancy loss in England
During this fellowship, I will be developing publications from my ESRC funded PhD in Sociology. I am writing a book about the reproductive politics of second trimester pregnancy loss which is based on women’s experiences of foetal death, premature labour, and termination for foetal anomaly between 13 and 24 weeks of pregnancy. This type of pregnancy loss is usually managed in the NHS through labour and birth of the foetal body. This biomedical management interacts with the legal threshold of viability at 24 weeks to produce specific consequences for pregnant women and their babies and foetuses who are implicated in the reproductive governance of this phase of pregnancy. I argue that it makes visible a teleological ontology of pregnancy in which pregnancies which do not end in the normative birth of a living person are marginalised and invalidated.
Besides the book, I will be working on further papers from my PhD and presenting my work at conferences. I also plan to develop funding applications in the field of social science of reproduction.
Mentor/s:
Professor Judith Green, Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health
Publications:
Middlemiss, A L (2022) Too big, too young, too risky: How diagnosis of the foetal body determines trajectories of care for the pregnant woman in pre-viability second trimester pregnancy loss. Sociology of Health and Illness, 44 (1): 81-98. Published Online First 25/11/21. doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13404, Open Access.
Middlemiss, A L (2021) Pregnancy remains, infant remains, or the corpse of a child? The incoherent governance of the dead foetal body in England. Mortality, 26 (3): 299-315. Published Online First 10/07/20. doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2020.1787365, Open Access.
Middlemiss, A L (March 2020) ‘It felt like the longest time of my life’: Using foetal Dopplers at home to manage anxiety about miscarriage. In: Kilshaw, S and Borg, K (Eds) Navigating miscarriage: Social, medical and conceptual perspectives. Pp: 160-183. Oxford, New York: Berghahn.
Contact Details as applicable
E-mail: A.L.Middlemiss@exeter.ac.uk
Twitter: (@almiddlemiss)