Abstract

In this chapter, Kate Kirkpatrick argues against the framing of ‘choice,’ on which both the reputedly too-positive account of pregnancy by Iris Marion Young and the overwhelmingly negative, ‘marginalized’ cases of pregnancy highlighted by Caroline Lundquist rely. Instead, turning to Beauvoir’s discussion of pregnancy in The Second Sex, Kirkpatrick argues that it describes but does not name a dimension of the subjective experience of pregnant persons that she calls ‘expectant anxiety.’ This concept problematizes the polarizing rhetoric of ‘choice’ by attending to the subjective experience of pregnancy, in particular the facing of a range of radically different (unknown and, in many cases, unknowable) concrete possibilities for one’s own life and a possible human other. Kirkpatrick draws on contemporary cultural and literary representations of pregnancy, abortion, and miscarriage to illustrate this concept. These include the Japanese Buddhist practice of mizuko kuyō and two novelistic depictions of infertility and abortion—Ayobami Adebayo’s Stay With Me [2017] and Britt Bennett’s The Mothers [2016].