Critical Phenomenology and Pregnancy as Disruption

This review reconstructs the aftermath of Husserl’s phenomenology and the development of critical phenomenology through the Frankfurt School and the French existentialists. Specifically, it explains how Simone de Beauvoir can be seen as a precursor to critical phenomenology because she relies upon history, science, first-person experiences, literary works, and empirical surveys to achieve her goal of deconstructing how we view sex. Moreover, Beauvoir wrote a history of abortion and engaged in practical resistance against its taboo status at the time. After clarifying Beauvoir’s importance, I present the contemporary thinkers who engage with abortion and pregnancy to analyse current predominant attitudes. What we see is a pivot to a more serious treatment of the topic, but the effort to include non-normal perspectives remains underdeveloped. So, I begin my broader examination of the abortion decision and its consequences by proposing the concept of pregnancy as disruption through an analysis of the lived experience of Taiwanese adolescents struggling with their decision to abort.