Luto gestacional e neonatal: emergência de uma nova problemática

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the construction of the phenomena of gestational and neonatal death and mourning as a contemporary social problem and health experience. Technological advances have promoted changes in the values of reproduction and personhood of the unborn/newborn. The decrease of the mortality rates, achieved by the applied medical science in the middle of the twentieth century, obliterates possible fatalities in the outcomes of pregnancies. Qualified as “babies”, unborn children embody family projects and can be given the sense of personhood, regardless of its survival. However, when facing premature death (gestational or after birth), doctors and caregivers reduce the offers of services: affected women suffer from invisibility and absence of care. This research consists, on one hand, in the ethnography of Medical Subject Headings (DeCS/MeSH) to delineate biomedical values and norms of conduct related to reproductive and neonatal care. The set of biomedical classifications is permeated by ambiguous moralities that sometimes grant the condition of fetal waste, or the status of person, patient, and citizen. On the other hand, given the lack of Brazilian literature, North American and French authors ground the analysis of the growing visibility of the phenomenon of gestational and neonatal mourning. In response to the social gap experienced by the couple whose child did not survive, caregivers and academics engage themselves in the production of frames for the interrupted projects of motherhood (and fatherhood). The discourses and practices are based on criticisms of the medical knowledge and hierarchy. The intertwining between affectation and expertise offers visibility and integration to the women who suffered the premature death of their children; the ideology of gestational and neonatal (GNN) mourning assigns new meanings to the process of procreation, the female body, and the personhood of the unborn/newborn.