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Although research on reproductive technologies such as IVF and egg freezing has traditionally been rather separated from the work on contraceptives and abortion, analysing reproductive and nonreproductive technologies together, as this volume proposes, can provide the basis for a broader contemporary politics of reproductive control. This chapter analyses this politics of integrating reproductive and nonreproductive technologies by focusing specifically on IVF-based fertility (preservation) treatments and (medical) abortion. More specifically, it explores both technologies' interrelated research trajectories and the financial and platformised dimensions of their clinical implementation. With a dual focus on egg freezing and medical abortion, this project seeks to explore how processes of platformisation and financialisation shape the clinical and commercial infrastructures that govern twenty-first-century reproduction. The chapter's broadened analytic scope that incorporates both reproductive and nonreproductive technologies highlights how a contemporary biopolitics of reproductive control may be expressed through these technologies' interrelated regulatory practices, shared politicised reference points (e.g. the embryo), opposite investment practices and mutually reinforcing social effects.

The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) defines the act of travelling abroad to undergo reproductive medical treatments, including assisted reproduction technology (ART) treatments as cross-border reproductive care. The experiences of patients seeking affordable reproductive care abroad have been widely studied in the last decades (Bergman, 2011a, 2011b; Blyth, 2010; Bracewell-Milnes et al., 2016; Culley et al., 2011; Guerzoni, 2017; Hudson, 2017, 2020; Hudson & Culley, 2011; Kroløkke, 2014a, 2014b; Rodino, Goedeke, & Nowoweiski, 2014; Salama et al., 2018; Shenfield et al., 2010; Van Hoof, Pennings, & De Sutter, 2016; Whittaker, Inhorn, & Shenfield, 2019; Zanini, 2011). However, French women and couples pursuing ART treatments abroad have received little scholarly attention until now. In this chapter, we aim to address this gap in the literature with the results from an ethnographic study conducted with French women and couples who seek ART treatments in Barcelona (Spain) using data from participant observation and in-depth interviews. We begin by discussing the European reproscape, introducing French and Spanish ART legislation, to explain why a large number of citizens are excluded from the French system of reproductive governance and why they choose Spain as their destination. Then, we will discuss the obstacles faced during the reproductive journey, and the impacts of this journey on the embodiment of the treatments are explored, in order to show how French women and couples handle the physical, emotional and cultural displacements that their reproductive project entails.

Is medically assisted fertilization (with the use of in vitro technology) about “reproductive rights” or about white women's privileges? What is “choice” for white and rich women seems to become a further commodification of the body for women of color and economically disadvantaged women.

Several feminists define reproductive rights by demanding social justice and a type of support for the mothers that does not include expensive technologies, which have a problematic outcome, that of generating a divide between women in the north and women in the south of the world. Some authors also talk about a “division of labor” in reproduction.

The first part of my chapter offers an outline of the historical feminist debate over gender and technology, looking at different positions regarding biotechnologies, and reproductive technologies in a specific way. The second part presents an investigation around the (often racialized) international market of eggs and surrogate mothers in the United States, India and Eastern Europe.

The third part consists of an analysis of few recent studies about the health of women who undergo ovarian hyper-stimulation in order to give eggs as “donation” (under payment); women who offer themselves as surrogate mothers and the children who have been conceived with in vitro fertilization, specifically with heterologue forms (egg donation or surrogate motherhood).

This chapter examines how lawmakers had to grapple with whether and how to regulate medically assisted reproduction after the 1988 Baby M court case in the United States propelled surrogate motherhood and related reproductive technologies onto the public policy stage. The chapter compares the public policy approaches of two countries, France and Germany, with the regulatory structures in the United States where the Baby M court case that garnered international attention took place. Specifically, the chapter provides an in-depth examination of the legal and historical contexts of each country's policy approaches in the form of existing national marriage, family, and adoption laws as well as policies regulating human reproduction. Lawmakers' task became even more pressing once citizens began using the court system and traveled abroad to either gain access to proscribed technologies or use them for a lesser fee elsewhere. As a result, Germany developed one of the most restrictive national laws in the world while France established certain legal proscriptions, which are still more far-reaching than the regulatory structures in the United States. Along the way, this developing policy area contributed to the creation of international frameworks governing medically assisted reproduction and the development of national bioethics advisory councils.

Given the growth in use of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) in reproductive medicine, most fertility clinics have developed websites describing the benefits of PGD. This chapter examines the media frames employed on 372 U.S. fertility clinic websites marketing PGD to consumers and how these frames promote biomedicalization.

Evaluation of website discourse was conducted with the use of frame analysis, a research methodology for examining the way media frames bind together claims, judgments, and value statements into a narrative that guides readers’ interpretation of an issue.

Findings show that website discourse frames PGD in terms of the attainment of reproductive normality, the management of reproductive risk, and the achievement of technological progress. These discursive frames contribute to the ongoing biomedicalization of reproduction by re-naturalizing conception as a choice rather than a natural fact, by promoting preoccupation with biomedical risk, and by affirming new forms of technological power and expertise.

Examination reveals the ways in which PGD has developed its own system of representations, notions of exchange, and epistemic forms, and highlights the important ethical issues leveraged on fertility clinic websites marketing PGD.

As one of the first attempts to systematically analyze media frames that depict PGD on fertility clinic websites, this study contributes to medical sociology by advancing theoretical and empirical understanding of the media processes shaping accounts of reproductive technologies. Findings also provide a foundation for further analysis of the social norms and bioethical standards arising from consumer marketing of reproductive technologies.

This paper analyzes how an infertile body is shaped by social discourses and reproductive technologies. Reproductive governances are articulated in this context by ideas and social values regarding family and motherhood, the binomial of infertility-TRA, legislation and norms and health professionals' practices. In addition, it shows how diverse infertile bodies experience (and withstand) these reproductive governances. Various sources have been consulted, including newspapers, biographical books, bibliographic sources from specialized literature and interviews carried out by the author.

This study aims to understand how midwifery students view ethical rights concerning the usage of reproductive technologies.

A series of focus groups were conducted with midwifery students who were asked to discuss four novel scenarios highlighting some of the most controversial issues on the ethics of assisted reproductive technologies. The sample consisted of third-year students studying at the Department of Midwifery of a university in the fall semester of the 2020–2021 academic year. In total, 60 students aged between 20 and 23 participated in the study (mean age 21.5 years).

Four scenarios that may be encountered in the use of assisted reproductive techniques were presented to the students. These scenarios were about IVF treatment, using the preimplantation gender identification technique, surrogate mother and using frozen zygotes. Four themes were identified from the analysis of the focus group data related to all four scenarios. These themes were: female reproduction, sex selection, surrogacy and reproductive cloning.

This study reveals what midwifery students consider essential components of assisted reproduction techniques, focusing on the professional attributes of shared decision-making. The results suggest that student midwives are sensitive to the range of ethical dilemmas associated with the increased use of technology in human reproduction, and construct distinct bound arise in relation to what is considered of benefit or good to the mother, parents, the child and to society. They also expressed their opposition to the excessive use of technological intervention, preferring instead to maintain a more naturalistic approach to reproduction.

This chapter discusses an instance of spectacular reproduction that circulated in US media during the late 2010s. Through the use of commercial DNA tests, it was revealed that a fertility doctor, Donald Cline, had used his own sperm to impregnate scores of women who had sought fertility treatment from him during the 1980s. More than 60 biogenetic children, now in their mid to late 30s, were identified by early 2020. This instance illustrates several concepts and concerns that might further guide the social and cultural study of human reproduction and especially the uses of reproductive technologies: (1) Most of us encounter instances of extraordinary reproduction from a mediated distance, yet they may shape and inform our expectations and experiences of ordinary reproduction in our everyday lives. How might the concept of spectacle help us understand what is perceived and understood about reproductive technologies? (2) Reproductive technologies offer ‘fixes’ for disruptions of not only reproduction but also kinship. A focus of this chapter is on genetic genealogy tests as a re(tro)productive technology, which produces children, parents, and kinship in hindsight. (3) The social and cultural study of reproductive technologies ought to take a longitudinal approach that both includes a lifecourse perspective and takes into account the historical contexts in which the technologies become developed and individuals encounter them.

Institutional theorists treat law and regulations as external factors that is part of the organization’s environment. While institutional theory has been criticized for its inability to recognize the role of agents and to theorize agency, the growing literature on institutional work and institutional entrepreneurship, partially informed by and co-produced with practice theory, advances a more dynamic view of processes of institutionalization. In order to cope with legal and regulatory frameworks, constituting the legal environment of the organization, there are evidence of organizational responses in the form of bargaining, political negotiations, and decoupling of organizational units and processes. The purpose of this paper is to report how legal and regulatory frameworks both shape clinical practices while at the same time they are also informed by the activities and interests of professional communities and commercial clinics.

This paper reports an empirical study of the Swedish-assisted conception industry and is based on a case study methodology including the use of interviews and formal documents and reports issues by governmental agencies.

The empirical material demonstrates how scientists in reproductive medicine and clinicians regard the legal and regulatory framework as what ensures and reinforces the quality of the therapies. At the same time, they actively engage to modify the legal and regulatory framework in the case when they believe it would benefit the patients. The data reported presents one successful case of how PGD/PGS can be used to develop the efficacy of the therapy, and one unsuccessful case of regulatory change in the case of patient interest groups advocating a legalization of commercial gestational surrogacy. In the former case, scientific know-how and medicinal benefits served to “push” the new clinical practice, while in the latter case, the “demand-pull” of patient interest groups fails to get recognition in regulatory and policy-making quarters.

The study contributes to the literature on agency in institutional theory (e.g. the emerging literature on institutional work) by emphasizing how legal and regulatory frameworks are in a constant process of being modified and negotiated in the face of novel technoscientific practices and social demands. More specifically, this process include many scientific, technological, economic, political and social relations and resources, making the legal environment of organizations what is the outcome from joint negotiations and agreements across organizational and professional boundaries.