The attitudes towards pregnancy are highly different in separate regions of the world, as analyzed by Tsipy Ivry in her book Embodying Culture: Pregnancy in Japan and Israel. From how women are treated to abortion policies, each region has adapted their own unique cultural perspectives on pregnancy. For Japan and Israel, they can be effectively summed up by environmentalism and geneticism, respectively.
Japan’s environmentalism is entrenched in its history of eugenics. In the past, they had sterilized those with undesirable traits but later adopted a stance of “taking care of oneself/the body (odaijini)” to produce better babies (Ivry 127). This shift to taking care of the women has become a large aspect of how the Japanese treat gestation. From a careful diet to reducing anxiety and stresses on the pregnant woman, the health of the mother is core in predicting how healthy the child will be. The Japanese do not necessarily scorn birth defects such as Down Syndrome (Ivry 173); in fact, women, unless they were raped or do not have the financial means to support the child, cannot opt for an abortion. Japanese pregnant women are seen as “less threatening” (Ivry 26) because of this attitude towards children born with Down Syndrome and abortion. Wrongful birth suits are not so much seen as cases for delivery accidents.
Pregnancy in Japan has been cultivated to manage the mother and instill habits to create a bond between parent and child. Though pregnancy is “less medicalized, supervised, and socially manipulated” in Japan than in Israel (Ivry 4), there seems to be a fundamental different system of values in place. Pregnant Japanese women are heavily encouraged to monitor their diets and even talk to their children while they are still in the womb to encourage intelligence and a stable relationship once the child is born.
Israel, in contrast, has adopted an attitude of diagnosing the fetus (Ivry 4). Israel’s geneticism involves a rather fatalistic view that genes and chromosomes of their child are beyond their power. Notably, obgyns push mothers to take many more tests to monitor the health of the developing child. Though pro-natal, Israel has a rather lax policy on abortions. Despite constant legislative attempts to reign in leniency, a “defective fetus” is permitted to be aborted if the mother so desires (though may encounter some resistance past the third trimester) (Ivry 39). The conception of a child does not appear to be featured as prominently; some women cited that they “could hardly imagine…speaking of “babies” in the early stages of pregnancy” (Ivry 2). Doctors are highly stringent in their regiment of testing. Every pregnancy is at high risk of fetal catastrophe, especially given the concept of “Jewish Diseases.” The fetus is meant to be diagnosed rather than formed a bond with.
Both cultures have a wildly different outlook on how pregnancy should be treated—it is a time that should be treated with extreme caution, but Japan and Israel heavily differ on how they handle pregnant women. Though an objective truth might state that neither culture is “more correct” in how they treat pregnant women, would Western culture favor a Japanese viewpoint or an Israeli viewpoint?