RE/VISIONING REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE PRACTICES WITHIN THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY: A STUDY IN CLINICAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL BIOETHICS

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the mechanisms within the healthcare industry that shape the trajectory of reproductive health outcomes for individuals made vulnerable by social and political marginalization. The dissertation uses critical genealogy and discourse analysis to investigate the rhetoric around the birth equity crisis. The critically engages the discourse concerning the disproportionate number of Black women and infants who die during the process of birth and demonstrates this how the discourse allocates institutional and individual responsibility for suffering. The dissertation then moves to investigate how two fields of nonclinical practitioners (clinical bioethics and doulas) engage reproductive suffering in ways that both replicate and resist the constructs of the biomedical gaze. Finally, the dissertation focuses constructively on visionary speculative fictions as a counter-response to the hegemony of the biomedical gaze that offers alternative ethical frameworks that improve the quality of reproductive healthcare and expand the socio-ethical possibilities of reproductive flourishing.