Pregnant women can feel masochistic pleasure from pain that threatens a miscarriage

Evidence

In both cases, the old idea that children have of fertilization through the mouth comes back to life. For infantile women in particular, pregnancy is, as in the past, assimilated to an illness of the digestive apparatus. Deutsch cites a woman patient who anxiously studied her vomit to see if there were not fragments of the fetus; but she knew, she said, that this obsession was absurd. Bulimia, lack of appetite, and feeling sick signal the same hesitation between the desire to conserve and the desire to destroy the embryo. I knew a young woman who suffered both from excessive vomiting and fierce constipation; she told me that one day she had the impression both of trying to reject the fetus and of striving to keep it, corresponding exactly to her avowed desires. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1455 (#expands, via linked claim)

Birth control and legal abortion would allow women to control their pregnancies freely. In fact, what decides woman’s fecundity is in part a considered desire and in part chance. As long as artificial insemination is not widely practiced, a woman might desire to become pregnant but be unable to—because either she does not have relations with men, or her husband is sterile, or she is unable to conceive. And, on the other hand, she is often forced to give birth against her will. Pregnancy and motherhood are experienced in very different ways depending on whether they take place in revolt, resignation, satisfaction, or enthusiasm. One must keep in mind that the decisions and feelings the young mother expresses do not always correspond to her deep desires. An unwed mother can be overwhelmed in material terms by the burden suddenly imposed on her, be openly distressed by it, and yet find in the child the satisfaction of secretly harbored dreams; inversely, a young married woman who joyfully and proudly welcomes her pregnancy can fear it in silence, hate it with obsessions, fantasies, and infantile memories that she herself refuses to recognize. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1433 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Pregnancy symptoms express simultaneous desire to reject and conserve the fetus — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1455; Painful childbirth is agentive despite being unwilled and particularized; Expressed attitudes toward pregnancy mask women’s contradictory and repressed inner feelings. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1433

Broader Connections

• Pregnancy symptoms express simultaneous desire to reject and conserve the fetus #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1455
• Expressed attitudes toward pregnancy mask women’s contradictory and repressed inner feelings. #corroborates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1433
• Painful childbirth is agentive despite being unwilled and particularized #expands (0.75)