User:Serendipity westbury/sandbox

Social implications
The increasingly widespread use of ultrasound technology in monitoring pregnancy has had a great impact on the way in which women and societies at large conceptualise and experience pregnancy and childbirth. The pervasive spread of obstetric ultrasound technology around the world and the conflation of its use with creating a ‘safe’ pregnancy as well as the ability to see and determine features like the sex of the fetus impact the way in which pregnancy is experienced and conceptualised. This “technocratic takeover” of pregnancy is not limited to western or developed nations but also effects conceptualisations and experiences in developing nations and is an example of the increasing medicalisation of pregnancy, a phenomenon that has social as well as technological ramifications. Ethnographic research concerned with the use of ultrasound technology in monitoring pregnancy can show us how it has changed the embodied experience of expecting mothers around the globe.