Abstract
We engage with feminist and critical disability studies and cosmopolitan ethics to search for a cosmopolitan vernacular of the “right to choose” among people faced with the predicaments surrounding fetal genetic difference. Our argument is grounded in reflections on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork on everyday decision-making in these circumstances in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We argue that the ethical notion of “obligations to strangers” rather than the dialectic of “right to choose”/“right to life” has a greater capacity to recognize a shared horizon of meaning between publicly polarized positions on reproductive choice among various activist groups. These groups include the Abortion Law Reform Association New Zealand, Saving Downs, Parent to Parent and the New Zealand Organisation for Rare Disorders. We also debate the merits of a more superficial (cosmopolitan) engagement with others in discussions of these highly politicized topics versus the deeper engagement more commonly associated with feminist research projects such as this.
•We propose that a cosmopolitan ethics based on obligations to strangers better explains diverse women’s responses to the issue of prenatal testing than existing feminist analyses•The assumption that feminist analyses are characterized by deep rapport is problematic when reporting on controversial and “anti-choice” points of view•Deep rapport with “right to life” and other conservative groups leads to branding the researcher as “brainwashed”•We recommend the use of a more superficial engagement during fieldwork with such groups based on Rapport’s notion of “politesse” in order to better facilitate public discussion of research results.