Contragestive Time: Pregnant Uncertainties in Fertility Control

Contragestive Time expands our understanding of the timing of reproduction to prepare the ground for the next generation of fertility control. Contraception has not delivered its promise - women struggle to find acceptable, effective methods, and are turning away from hormonal contraception. Innovation is urgently needed and is likely to come in the form of pills taken weekly, monthly or just after a missed period. ‘Contragestives’ operate in the invisible time between a possible conception and the possibility of an early abortion, ensuring a state of ‘non-pregnancy’ without it being known whether pregnancy ever existed. Contragestives challenge clinical, ethical and legal distinctions between contraception and abortion which is both their promise, and their risk. Contragestive Time carefully and collaboratively opens the possibility of intervening in this time. Deliberately moving beyond entrenched disagreements about the timing of ‘life’ and the ethics of contraception and abortion, it unpicks the history and philosophical implications of terms that maintain these boundaries and the ‘clock time’ that measures reproduction. Creating new meanings of reproductive time, it tests legal frameworks, generates new clinical knowledge, and considers their impact on policy and rights. Contragestive Time prepares the philosophical, social, legal, medical and political grounds for a contragestive future.