Cervical cancer narratives: invoking 'God's will' to re-appropriate reproductive rights in present-day Romania

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in contemporary Southern Romania, this paper scrutinises local moralities governing some women's refusal to enrol in free reproductive healthcare initiatives targeting cervical cancer through primary and secondary prevention (human papillomavirus [HPV] vaccin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Culture, health & sexuality health & sexuality, 2015, Vol.17 (1), p.48-62
Main Author: Pop, Cristina A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Body
Cancer
Cervical cancer
Disease prevention
Early Detection of Cancer - psychology
Female
God's will
Gynecology
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice - ethnology
HPV vaccination
Human papillomavirus
Humans
Narration
Papanicolaou Test
Papillomavirus Infections - diagnosis
Papillomavirus Infections - prevention & control
Papillomavirus Vaccines - therapeutic use
Public health
Religion
Religiosity
Reproductive health
Reproductive Rights
Romania
Sexual health
Social research
Uterine Cervical Neoplasms - diagnosis
Uterine Cervical Neoplasms - prevention & control
Vaginal Smears
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Summary:Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in contemporary Southern Romania, this paper scrutinises local moralities governing some women's refusal to enrol in free reproductive healthcare initiatives targeting cervical cancer through primary and secondary prevention (human papillomavirus [HPV] vaccination and Papanicolaou [Pap] testing, respectively). Women backed up their rejection of participation in official reproductive care programmes by mentioning 'God's will' as the ultimate trigger of cervical cancer. They withheld their own and their daughters' bodies from biomedical intervention and used discursive references to divine logic to imbue their refusal with moral legitimacy. However, 'God's will' is not a mere rhetorical device, since it has a correlate in many of these women's embodied reproductive experiences. As this paper argues, religious narratives, far from stripping ordinary citizens of their reproductive choices, constitute the medium through which they display individual agency. In fact, invoking 'God's will' empowers Romanian women to challenge state control and it enables them to re-appropriate their bodies by making a counter-intuitive, yet bold, choice.
ISSN:1369-1058
1464-5351
DOI:10.1080/13691058.2014.948491