Choreographing Risk: Multiple Sociotechnical Networks of Multiple Pregnancy

This paper creates the concept of “choreographing risk” to explore the sociotechnical networks of multiple pregnancy, mostly caused by assisted reproductive technology. I argue that during the processes of assisted conception and multiple pregnancy, heterogeneous elements of technical, legal, financial, emotional, political and gender, are coordinated around risk. Data includes in-depth interviews of women and medical professionals, and archival data. I find that in the stage of getting pregnant with assisted reproductive technology, doctors tend to use multiple embryo transfer and ovarian stimulation medication to increase the pregnancy rate. Both doctors and women perceive failure of conception as the major risk, and tend to disregard the risk of multiple pregnancy. In the case of multifetal conception, fetal reduction becomes a technical model to reduce the risk of multiple pregnancy. However, some women and doctors refuse this technique for reasons other than health risk; network of fetal reduction often collapses. High prevalence of multiple pregnancy in Taiwan exists. Pregnant women of twins and triples take embodied responsibility to avoid risk of premature birth, including diverse bodily work, and negotiation between productive and reproductive labor. This paper shows that as women vis-à-vis medical professionals become more and more the central choreographer in the multiple networks of multiple pregnancy. For policy implication, I suggest adjusting assisted conception methods, such as reducing the number of multiple embryo transfer during in-vitro fertilization, to relive women from the hard labor of multiple risk choreography.