Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction in Vietnam
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Quý: “My Decision Depends on Medical Expertise” Quý: “My Decision Depends on Medical Expertise”
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Ethical Moments Ethical Moments
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“I Could Never have Decided on My Own”: Biomedical Encounters “I Could Never have Decided on My Own”: Biomedical Encounters
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Acts of Trust: Enacting National Belonging Acts of Trust: Enacting National Belonging
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Acts of Kinship Acts of Kinship
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The Limits of Life Itself: Second-Trimester Abortion as Moral Experience The Limits of Life Itself: Second-Trimester Abortion as Moral Experience
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The Face: “Human Conscience Always Comes First” The Face: “Human Conscience Always Comes First”
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“This was my Child, Not a Thing”:Ritual Dilemmas “This was my Child, Not a Thing”:Ritual Dilemmas
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Exorcising Child-Spirits from the Family Body Exorcising Child-Spirits from the Family Body
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Ghosts and Grievances Ghosts and Grievances
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7 Questions of Conscience
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Published:22 February 2014
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Abstract
This chapter explores the social relations of authority, obligation, and love out of which women's reproductive decisions were forged when a fetus was defined as abnormal. The chapter highlights how women in Hanoi found their bearings in this disorienting situation by listening to the opinions of others, drawing health care professionals and family members into the decisions that they had to make. The chapter also attends to the feelings of remorse that the women expressed after having their pregnancies terminated. Despite their conviction that they had come to the right decision, all the women felt troubled by questions of conscience. To account for these ambivalent emotions, the chapter argues, the fetus as a moral agent must be taken into consideration. After its death, the fetal spirit still hovered, threatening to keep haunting its parents. The chapter describes how this compelled the relatives of the prospective parents to take a range of ritual precautions, seeking to exorcise the spirit from the family body. People's fears of ghostly fetal returns can, the chapter concludes, be seen as moral commentaries on impossibly hard reproductive choices.
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