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Adoption, ART, and a Re-Conception of the Maternal Body: Toward Embodied Maternity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Sarah-Vaughan Brakman  and
Sally J. Scholz
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Abstract

We criticize a view of maternity that equates the natural with the genetic and biological and show how such a practice overdetermines the maternal body and the maternal experience for women who are mothers through adoption and ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies). As an alternative, we propose a new framework designed to rethink maternal bodies through the lens of feminist embodiment. Feminist embodied maternity, as we call it, stresses the particularity of experience through subjective embodiment. A feminist embodied maternity emphasizes the physical relations of the subjective lived-body rather than the genetic or biological connections. Instead of universalizing claims about the maternal body, embodied maternity looks to communicable experiences and empathetic understanding.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 21 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Maternal Bodies , Winter 2006 , pp. 54 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by Hypatia, Inc.

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