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Producing (potentially) pregnant teen bodies: biopower and adolescent pregnancy in the USA

Although the rate of adolescent childbearing in the USA continues to decline, and its consequences increasingly found to be equivocal, a persistent discourse of teen pregnancy as pathology structures public health responses. Foucault’s concepts of biopower and governmentality are useful to understand and critically analyze the operation of power in discourses related to adolescent childbearing; specifically, how power over life is simultaneously exercised at the level of the body and the population through self-governance. By conducting a situational analysis using health promotion materials and policy documents from a national, non-governmental teen pregnancy prevention organization, I identify two strategies through which the management of bodies and populations emerges in relation to teen pregnancy: the production of risky bodies and subjectivities and the deployment of a regulatory regime of heterosexuality. While the pregnant teenage subject is produced through public health discourses of normalizing judgment, risk, and deference to experts, the pregnant teen body is regulated through abjection and rites of redemption. At the same time, the expansive scope of the teen pregnancy ‘problem’ requires increasing forms of self-governance and rational behaviors from across diverse populations. This analysis enables us to challenge deeply entrenched assumptions guiding teen pregnancy prevention efforts and explore the possibility that the stigmatization and regulation of young women’s reproduction reinforce and reproduce existing health and social inequalities.