Rumor as ethical vernacular:Ebola and the womb in eastern Congo

The position of pregnant women in clinical research remains a topic of international ethical debate. Yet, the reflections of actual and potential trial participants, including pregnant women themselves, often remain absent. Following a policy reversal in 2019, pregnant women were eligible to participate in a second Ebola vaccine trial during an epidemic in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. This article follows how this decision was perceived in Goma, the meanings and functions of the rumors that emerged about reproductive health, and how these rumors influenced pregnant women’s experience of the trial. I argue that the womb became a site to discuss broader biopolitical anxieties about collective survival, but that rumors also became a vehicle for ethical debate amidst uncertainty. Ethical debates about medical research continue locally through other ethical vernaculars - like rumors - and center on contested ideas of acceptable risk, shaped by collective historical experiences.