Introduction: Reproduction through the Lens of Medical Sociology

When megastar Beyoncé announced her most recent pregnancy on Instagram, her post garnered millions of views almost instantly. The highly staged photos of Beyoncé costumed as a kind of fertility goddess, wreathed in flower garlands, were widely liked and shared, and generated memes and parodies that quickly went as viral as the original image. It seems that pregnancy has the power to command our attention, at least when it happens to a celebrity. Indeed, reproduction is highly visible in contemporary society, whether the headlines are covering the latest celebrity birth (and, in the case of Serena Williams, informing the public about post-partum complications, particularly the high morbidity rates of Black women), showcasing companies such as Google and Facebook offering to pay for their female workers to freeze their eggs, reporting on the expansion of transnational surrogacy to countries such as India, alerting us about the public health concerns and consequences of the Zika virus, or, more recently, covering the case of a woman in Alabama who was indicted for manslaughter (with the charges later dropped) because she was shot in the stomach while pregnant.