| In the last three decades, studies in the history and sociology of technology have taught us a great deal about the processes of invention, development, and diffusion. However, almost nothing is known, historically, about the technologies of pregnancy termination. Despite the fact that these technologies are having an enormous social, ethical, and economic impact on today's world, no scholar has ever thoroughly explored the changing technologies of abortion between the years 1850 and 1980, and no effort has been made to understand how these changing technologies were connected to the politics of medical professionalization, specialization, and commercialization. This dissertation seeks to fill this historical vacuum.; This study will trace the changes in pregnancy termination technology from 1850 (when herbal methods began to be replaced by surgical methods) to 1980 (by which time numerous surgical, and chemical, methods had developed and diffused). Since pregnancy termination has always been a politically charged subject, these scientific and technological changes must, of necessity, be viewed within the context of a variety of disputes: disputes between laypeople and professionals about who should be licensed to control pregnancy termination; disputes between men and women about who should be responsible for fertility control; disputes between those who want the procedure to be legal and those who want it criminalized; and disputes between advocates of one technological system over another.; Thus this dissertation will be a study in both the social construction of technology and in the technological construction of one very significant social process---pregnancy termination. Moreover, by placing these reproductive technologies in their proper historical context, this dissertation will not only elucidate the issues with which our predecessors struggled, but will also shed a ray of light on the current debate over abortion technologies such the D&X (intact dilation and extraction, or "partial birth abortion"). |
