Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: The Cultural Politics and Bioethics of Reproductive Surgery in Mexico, 1800-1940

本论文的研究课题是科学史；它侧重于墨西哥的生殖手术，特别强调剖腹产和绝育手术的政治。该项目探讨了宗教、国家和科学辩论及其与临床手术发展的关系。它将讨论生殖手术如何引起种族和宗教方面的关注，以及在什么情况下这些关注会改变或持续下去。它将利用一系列档案来源，包括医院登记、医疗记录、监狱报告、报纸文章以及医生、助产士、病人和医学生的来信。它将一系列主题和演员联系起来，调查影响临床决策的因素以及它们如何影响患者的生活。该调查员（Co-PI）还将建立一个关于墨西哥公共客户人口统计、手术技术和患者对生殖手术投诉的历史信息数据库。她将与墨西哥卫生部长的产妇保健项目协调编制这些数据，并将向立法者、国际非政府组织和宣传团体提供这些信息。该项目的智力价值基于历史科学的方法，该方法优先考虑长期历史结构而不是事件。历史范围从殖民时期晚期开始。这样做将使研究者能够充分建立和探索关键主题：国家，教会和民众在定义和管理出生（和死亡）的身体和灵魂方面的冲突。该项目将利用阐明外科技术、分娩与宗教和精神世界观之间联系的文献。这样做将有助于分析两个重要主题：医疗实践中种族的社会建构，以及宗教在形成科学意识形态和对科学意识形态作出反应方面的作用。该项目旨在发展并参与分析生殖手术的原始历史和哲学框架；因此，它有可能改变历史学家对全球产科史的看法。

General Audience Summary This dissertation research project is in the history of science; it focuses on reproductive surgery in Mexico with a particular emphasis on the politics of cesarean sections and sterilizing operations. The project explores religious, state, and scientific debates and their relations to the development of clinical operations. It will address how reproductive surgeries acquire racial and religious concerns, and under what circumstances these concerns shift or persist. It will draw on a range of archival sources, including hospital registers, medical records, prison reports, newspaper articles, and letters from doctors, midwives, patients, and medical students. It will link a range of themes and actors to investigate the factors that influenced clinical decisions and how they affected the lives patients. The investigator (the Co-PI) will also develop a historical database of information about public client demographics, surgical technologies, and patient complaints regarding reproductive surgeries in Mexico. She will develop this data in coordination with the Mexican Secretary of Health's project on maternal healthcare, and she will make the information available to lawmakers, international NGOs, and advocacy groups.Technical Summary The intellectual merit of the project is based in the approach to the history science that gives priority to long-term historical structures over events. The historical range begins in the late colonial period. Doing so will allow the investigator to fully establish and explore the key theme: State, Church, and popular conflicts over defining and managing bodies and souls in birth (and in death). The project will utilize documents that illuminate the connections between surgical technologies, childbirth, and religious and spiritual worldviews. Doing so will facilitate an analysis of two important themes: the social construction of race in medical practice, and the role of religion in both shaping and reacting to scientific ideologies. The project aims to develop and to engage with original historical and philosophical frameworks for analyzing reproductive surgeries; as a result, it has the potential to modify how historians think about the global history of obstetrics.