Painless Patients and Painful Bodies: Birth Control under Biopolitical Care in China

This paper investigates the phenomenological dimensions of women’s experiences of contraception under China’s one-child policy. Drawing on interviews with eight women in Nanjing, the study highlights cases where birth control was remembered as painless, trivial, or completely forgotten. Contrary to the dominant literature, which emphasizes the tangible pains and coercive aspects of birth control policies, this research explores existential forms of suffering—anxiety, guilt, and melancholy—that remain largely unspoken and unintelligible. By examining these affective responses, the paper argues that pain experienced through birth control extends beyond bodily symptoms, manifesting instead as existential disturbances arising from disrupted life rhythms and foreclosed familial possibilities. The study further critiques the nature of biopolitical care under the one-child policy, contending that its medicalized approach erases forms of pain that lack clinical visibility. Ultimately, the paper advocates for an ethical reorientation towards a more gentle, interpersonal care, one that acknowledges and attends to the nuanced, often invisible suffering of women’s reproductive experiences.