Interpretive contests over anti-Müllerian hormone testing: How women engage with and resist anticipatory medicine

Abstract

Anti-M & uuml;llerian hormone (AMH) testing is used as a biomarker of fertility potential, despite limited evidence supporting its predictive value. This article examines how AMH testing is used and contested in Turkey through an analysis of online discussions on a women's forum. We analyze how women report doctors' claims and recommendations regarding low AMH values, how they collectively interpret test results, and how they negotiate anticipatory medicine. The findings show that interpretive contests over AMH testing emerge between patients and doctors and are shaped by multiple temporal frameworks, including references to past experiences and reproductive futures. These contests reflect a double movement: the expansion of anticipatory medicine through AMH testing and subsequent recommendations for assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), and resistance to this expansion. While some women embrace AMH testing for reproductive planning, many resist ART recommendations based primarily on low AMH values in the absence of an infertility diagnosis. Women's shared interpretations draw on experiential knowledge that is often consistent with evidence-based understanding of AMH as an unreliable predictor of fertility. We argue that these interpretive contests constitute a key site through which women engage with and resist anticipatory medicine within a private reproductive healthcare context marked by perceived commercial pressures.