Abstract

Ethnographies of reproduction have documented how people and relationships are made (and unmade) through and beyond gestation and biological birth. In this article, after reviewing the literature on prenatal screenings and diagnosis in European and North American societies, I focus on circumstances where pregnant women and their partners have an abortion for fetal abnormalities. I argue that these reproductive disruptions offer insight into specific ideas of personhood and relatedness. Based on the narratives I collected among women who terminated a pregnancy following a diagnosis of Down syndrome in Italy, I show how relations shape women’s choices and that abortion can coexist with personalization and relatedness