Review: "Pregnancy Test" by Karin Weingarten

 

Pregnancy Test by Karin Weingarten
Published March 2023 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★★

A quiz: All of the following methods have, at various points in history, been put forth as accurate pregnancy tests. Which has been scientifically tested and proven to have merit?

A) A woman urinating on bags of barley, wheat, and beans to see if they sprouted (variations between 1350 BCE Egypt and 900s CE Arabic texts)

B) Pouring milk into a glass of a woman's urine and seeing if the milk floated (1200s Germany)

C) Placing an iron needle in a cup of urine and looking for the development of black spots (1500s Switzerland)

D) Mixing urine with wine and seeing if it looked as though beans had stewed in it (1600s Netherlands)

E) Injecting a Japanese Bitterling fish with urine and seeing if the fish released eggs (1930s)

See the end of this review for the answer.

I subjected several friends, and also my mother and siblings, to this quiz while reading the book, each time with the caveat that no, it doesn't have any bearing on my life just now. The time it took me to read this book easily more than doubles the amount of time that I have spent thinking about pregnancy tests over my lifetime (I've never seen one out of the packaging), but it was fascinating: part of a series of short books, Object Lessons, Pregnancy Test takes you through the scientific and social history of—surprise—the pregnancy test. "While the twenty-first-century home pregnancy test has become a familiar object," writes Weingarten, "it started out as an idea about reproductive autonomy and privacy, and its implications have had a greater impact on our reproductive lives than anyone could have imagined" (loc. 129).

At 160-odd pages, it's perhaps easiest to approach this as a series of long-form essays about history and social context and autonomy. Think doctors being the ones to decide whether women should be allowed to have a pregnancy test (after all, if she knows she's pregnant, she might choose an abortion); think scientists objecting to at-home tests because women couldn't be "trusted" to manage mixing a few chemicals together; think a rabbit or mouse being dissected for every laboratory pregnancy test done. I'm sorry (or—not), I'm a nerd, but this is utterly fascinating.

Much of this sounds like things of the past, but as Weingarten discusses, there are current—and pressing—implications of women being able, or not, to learn about the occupancy of their uteruses on their own terms. Again, this is a slim little book, but it's the sort of thing that should catapult you into even more reading.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. Quotes are from a review copy and may not be final.

Quiz answer: A 1963 study showed that "a pregnant woman's urine could encourage the germination of both barley and wheat" (loc. 568). Whether or not the other methods have been tested, though, is unclear, and definitely merits scientific investigation, please.