This article explores the reasons women of diverse class, racial ethnic, national, and
religious backgrounds give for their decisions not to accept an amniocentesis or, having
accepted one, not to pursue an abortion after diagnosis of serious fetal disability. The
narratives of refusers reveal conflicts and tensions between the universalizing rationality
of biomedical interventions into pregnancy and the wider heterogeneous social frame
work to which women respond in their decision-making processes.
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