Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority Among Haredi Women

"Michal Raucher shows that women's reproductive and moral agency is much more complicated than many assume--especially with respect to religious and cultural traditions that are not widely known by those outside of those traditions--here specifically speaking to the experiences of ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi) women. She shows the strong contribution that an ethnographic method can make to give a much more richly textured understanding to the decisions, norms, values, and worldviews of these women than is possible to achieve though studies of religious and legal texts alone."--Aana Marie Vigen, author of Women, Ethics, and Inequality in U.S. Healthcare

"Michal Raucher argues that women who are in their third pregnancy and beyond claim a distinctive relationship with the divine, a relationship that authorizes them to trust their own embodied knowledge over the directives of their doctors or their rabbis. This work is an important intervention in Jewish studies, providing much needed attention on those who have too often been marginalized, like women and children."--Ayala Fader, author of Mitzvah Girls

"Conceiving Agency deftly demonstrates how religious women, when they make reproductive decisions, are not simply applying principles drawn from their tradition, but actively constructing their own moral authority within that tradition. The book thereby expands and complexifies our understanding of Jewish reproductive subjectivity, of women's religious subjectivity, and of reproduction as a primary site of the constitution of religious traditions as such, all at once."--Jeremy Posadas, Austin College

"Through poignant story-telling and critical self-disclosure, Raucher shatters the traditional boundaries of insider/outsider in the study of religion in deeply insightful ways. Her ethnography weaves together a searing feminist analysis that upends conventional understandings of Haredi women by demonstrating how they subvert traditional expectations of female control and submission in exercising agency and religious authority over their reproductive lives. A must read for anyone interested in how and why acknowledging the voices and experiences of embodied moral agents is essential to the work of ethics."--Rebecca Todd Peters, Elon University, Author of Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice.

"A fascinating and original analysis that illuminates how women transform their embodied knowledge of pregnancy and childbirth into expertise. A real contribution to the literature and a remarkable achievement!"--Susan Martha Kahn, author of Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception in Israel

"Michal Raucher is part of a small but growing cohort of scholars working in the field of religious ethics who challenge the former practice of privileging "scriptural sources, religious doctrines and law, and central forms of religious authority" (16) when engaging in bioethical decision-making and formulating health policies.In this precise and carefully researched study, with clear writing making it available to readers of diverse backgrounds, Raucher reveals how she has come to understand how Haredi women in Israel (unfortunately she does not specify which community), who typically have large families, make their reproductive decisions in a number of contexts."--Vanessa Ochs - University of Virginia, AJS Review