Fetal ultrasound as intrusion

Edwards, Mary ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1416-9758 and Dolezal, Luna 2025. Fetal ultrasound as intrusion. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy Item availability restricted.

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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
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:	12 Dec 2025 10:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/183122

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