A Woman's Right to Know
Pregnancy Testing in Twentieth-Century Britain
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23213249 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jesse Olszynko-Gryn (0000-0001-5365-8592, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Publication date | 2023-12-12 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | BOOK |
| Venue | A Woman's Right to Know (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | The MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.7551/mitpress/13917.001.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W4382599886 |
| ISBN | 9780262371377 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 198 |
The history of pregnancy testing, and how it transformed from an esoteric laboratory tool to a commonplace of everyday life. Pregnancy testing has never been easier. Waiting on one side or the other of the bathroom door for a “positive” or “negative” result has become a modern ritual and rite of passage. Today, the ubiquitous home pregnancy test is implicated in personal decisions and public debates about all aspects of reproduction, from miscarriage and abortion to the “biological clock” and IVF. Yet, only three generations ago, women typically waited not minutes but months to find out whether they were pregnant. A Woman's Right to Know tells, for the first time, the story of pregnancy testing—one of the most significant and least studied technologies of reproduction. Focusing on Britain from around 1900 to the present day, Jesse Olszynko-Gryn shows how demand shifted from doctors to women, and then goes further to explain the remarkable transformation of pregnancy testing from an obscure laboratory service to an easily accessible (though fraught) tool for every woman. Lastly, the book reflects on resources the past might contain for the present and future of sexual and reproductive health. Solidly researched and compellingly argued, Olszynko-Gryn demonstrates that the rise of pregnancy testing has had significant—and not always expected—impact and has led to changes in the ways in which we conceive of pregnancy itself.
Abortion · Biology · Miscarriage · Population · Pregnancy · Pregnancy test · Reproduction · Reproductive health · Test (biology) · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Medicine · Political Philosophy and Ethics
The making of man-midwifery
Demography and Degeneration
The normal and the pathological
The making of the unborn patient
Evaluating and Standardizing Therapeutic Agents, 1890–1950
The Politicization of Mumsnet
Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain
Birth Control, Sex, and Marriage in Britain 1918-1960
Disciplining Reproduction
Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions
Gender and technology in the making
The Social shaping of technology
The Captured Womb
How Users Matter
Testing Women, Testing the Fetus
Medicine and the Saints
The Midwife's Tale
Family Newspapers?
The World League for Sexual Reform
Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany
The environments of reproductive and birth defects research in the U.S. and West Germany (c. 1955–1975)
Keeping the culture alive
The Visible Industrialist
Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact
The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
Invisible Labour in Modern Science
Consumerism in Twentieth-Century Britain
Medicine and the Saints
Common Bodies. Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-Century England
The Making of a Best-Selling Book on Reproduction
Pathology in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Introduction
"A Private Little Revolution"
A “Crutch to Assist in Gaining an Honest Living”
Biotypology, Endocrinology, and Sterilization
Making room for rubbers
A different mode of marketing? The importance of scientific articles in the marketing process of Salvarsan
A historical argument for regulatory failure in the case of Primodos and other hormone pregnancy tests
The Duogynon controversy and ignorance production in post-thalidomide West Germany
Reinventions of a spa town
Domestic Disappointments
Living in ‘New Times’
Will the Real 1950S Please Stand Up
The Decline of Uroscopy in Early Modern Learned Medicine (1500-1650)
Reflections on the reproductive sciences in agriculture in the UK and US, ca. 1900–2000
The pharmaceutical industry in the biotech century
Prenatal diagnosis
A river that is cutting its own bed’
Artificial insemination and eugenics
Food, growth and time
From ‘public service’ to artificial insemination
Miscarriage, abortion or criminal feticide
Better prepared than synthesized
Making birth defects ‘preventable’
Wanted—standard guinea pigs’
The demand for pregnancy testing
Defusing the population bomb in the 1950s
Newspaper Problem Pages and British Sexual Culture Since 1918
The BBC's written archives as a source for media history
History from the top shelf
Family planning, the pill, and reproductive agency in Italy, 1945–1971
Wildlife Media and Representations of Africa, 1950s to the 1970s
Scottish and English Health Policy From 1948 to the 1973 Reforms
Attitudes to Abortion in the Era of Reform
Challenging Myths of the 1960s
Who is My Donor? The Local Propaganda Techniques of London's Emergency Blood Transfusion Service, 1939-45
Lesbian Motherhood and the Artificial Insemination by Donor Scandal of 1978
Waiting for the Doctor
Sly Demagogues’ and Wartime Radio
A British Problem Affecting British People’
Selling Shame
Constructing Women and Smoking as a Public Health Problem in Britain 1950–1990s
Beyond Constructivism
Not a Priority
Abortion Policy and Politics on the Lane Committee of Enquiry, 1971-1974
Medical Refugees and the Modernisation of British Medicine, 1930-1960
Weighting for Health
Cancer in the Twentieth Century
Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology
Medical Refugees in Britain and the Wider World, 1930-1960
I would not feel the pain if I were with you’
Cryptic Pregnancies and their Legal Consequences in Pre-Modern Finland
Raising a Nation of 'Good Animals
Death Germs Through the Post’
Looking for Trouble
European Refugee Physicians in Scotland, 1933-1945
In Search of the 'Problem Family
The British Fight against Cancer
Message in a Bottle
The multiple ‘epidemic’
Other Than Healing
When it Hurts to Look
The Complexities of 'Consumerism
More than Mothers
Women’s Rights, Family Planning, and Population Control
Thomas Bassett Macaulay and the Bahamas
The life organic
Actor-Networks and Ambivalence
Bringing the pregnancy test home from the hospital
Making the Pap Smear into the `Right Tool' for the Job
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |