Edwards, Mary  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1416-9758 and Dolezal, Luna
2026.
Fetal ultrasound as intrusion.
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy
10.1017/hyp.2025.10053
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Abstract
This paper highlights how fetal ultrasound scanning involves an intrusion upon the integrity of the pregnant person’s body and their psychological space. It contends that this intrusion has the potential to harm the pregnant people subjected to it in medical contexts as a result of the normative practices and interpretative frameworks associated with it. The socio-cultural practices associated with fetal ultrasound pathologize pregnant bodies and perpetuate logics in which pregnant people are subordinated, discredited, devalued, and policed within social relations as women and mothers-to-be. Further, the paper argues that the intrusion of fetal ultrasound is obscured in the medical monitoring of pregnancy where it is taken for granted as a benign aspect of routine antenatal care. Consequently, we contend that fetal ultrasound is a normalized and gendered intrusion that can cause epistemic harm, scaffold obstetric violence, and may sometimes constitute a form of obstetric violence in and of itself.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Published Online |
| Status: | In Press |
| Schools: | Schools > English, Communication and Philosophy |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| ISSN: | 0887-5367 |
| Date of First Compliant Deposit: | 11 December 2025 |
| Date of Acceptance: | 24 November 2025 |
| Last Modified: | 10 Mar 2026 14:11 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/183122 |
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