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In her pathbreaking book, Abortion and Woman's Choice, Rosalind Pollack Petchesky astutely observed that, in many societies, control over the methods and goals of reproduction is a critical site of contest, particularly between women and men. Yet the circumstances under which reproductive relations will be characterized by conflict, consensus, or some of both have seldom been systematically explored. In this paper, I therefore offer three examples of different structural contexts in which either women or men had the preponderance of power to influence key aspects of women's reproductive activities. I argue that while structural factors, notably the distribution of economic, political, and institutional resources, are fundamental, they do not only act directly but are experienced, interpreted, and made meaningful through specific cultural processes, particularly gender ideologies, norms about morality, and beliefs about how women should behave. It is together that these structural factors and cultural processes shape the climates and contexts within which women's reproductive activities are situated and take place, [reproduction, gender politics, Latin America, Mexican Americans]

Global ethnography : problems of theory and method / Susan L. Erikson -- Globalizing, reproducing, and civilizing rural subjects : population control policy and constructions of rural identity in China / Junjie Chen -- Planning men out of family planning : a case study from Mexico / Matthew Gutmann -- Antiviral but pronatal? ARVs and reproductive health : the view from a South African township / Lisa Ann Richey -- Birth in the age of AIDS : local responses to global policies and technologies in South India / Cecilia Van Hollen -- Competing globalizing influences on local Muslim women's reproductive health and human rights in Sudan : women's rights, international feminism, and Islamism / Ellen Gruenbaum -- Reproductive viability and the state : embryonic stem cell research in India / Aditya Bharadwaj -- Globalization and Gametes : Islam, assisted reproductive technologies, and the Middle Eastern state / Marcia C. Inhorn -- Law, technology, and gender relations : following the path of DNA paternity tests in Brazil / Claudia Fonseca -- From sex workers to tourism workers : a structural approach to male sexual labor in Dominican tourism areas / Mark B. Padilla -- Family reunification ideals and the practice of transnational reproductive life among Africans in Europe / Caroline H. Bledsoe and Papa Sow -- Problematizing polygamy, managing maternity : the intersections of global, state, and family politics in the lives of West African migrant women in France / Carolyn F. Sargent -- Lost in translation : lessons from California on the implementation of state-mandated fetal diagnosis in the context of globalization / Carole H. Browner -- Reproductive rights in no-woman's-land : politics and humanitarian assistance / Linda M. Whiteford and Aimee R. Eden -- The mystery child and the politics of reproduction : between national imaginaries and transnational confrontations / Didier Fassin.

The medical decision-making literature has paid scant attention to how prior expectations of patients and clinicians can influence medical encounters and affect patients' choices whether to accept or reject medical testing or treatment. To illuminate the issue, we offer a reflexive analysis of the experiences of a Mexican-American couple offered amniocentesis based on the woman's age and prior pregnancy history. We examine the impact of three principal factors: incongruity between expectations and reality for both patient and clinicians; the actors' ethnic backgrounds; and the history and nature of relationship dynamics between the patient and her male partner. We conclude that unmet expectations on the part of both patient and clinicians evoked powerful emotions that altered the woman's previous intention to agree to amniocentesis.