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This edited collection proposes an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to the study of reproductive technologies (RTs), which reflects the fact that many people use different technologies throughout their lifecourse and resists the disciplinary siloing of research on these technologies. The ever-expanding availability of RTs, the continued roll-out of ‘family planning’ and maternity services across low- and middle-income settings and the rapid development of the fertility industry mean that it is more likely than ever that individuals, especially women and trans* people, will engage with more than one RT at some point in their life. These multiple engagements with RTs will affect users' expectations and uptake, as well as the technologies' availability, commercial success, ethical status and social meanings. We offer this book as part of a wider movement in the study of reproduction and RTs, which takes inspiration from the reproductive justice framework to address forms of exclusion, discrimination and stratification that are perpetuated in the development and application of RTs and the ways in which they are studied and theorised. Here, we introduce the project and outline the structure of the book.

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.

Here we provide a short reflection on the persistent theme of relationality in reproductive studies which allows us to draw out further insights from each of the chapters.

This paper aims to examine the media coverage of a new reproductive benefit (oocyte cryopreservation) made available to employees at Apple and Facebook in 2014, in light of an ongoing public debate around the conflict experienced by women to be both “ideal workers” and “ideal mothers”.

The study examines the coverage of the new benefit as a news item in major American newspapers and websites. It uses problem/solution frame analysis and provides a qualitative analysis of the leads, journalists’ rhetoric and sources found in 23 news articles on the topic. A rudimentary quantitative analysis of positive and negative solution evaluations is also included.

All the articles were found to use a problem/solution frame in their presentation of the new benefit as a news item. When biology is presented as at the root of the motherhood/career conflict, as it was by many journalists and their chosen sources, this logically leads to a biotechnological solution, such as egg-freezing. Other potential contributors to motherhood/career conflict, such as rigid and gendered career timelines and inadequate supports for working parents, are largely left out of the discussion – as are potential broader workplace and socio-cultural changes.

This study was limited to news articles only; the coverage of the issue in opinion pieces and in other media might have different findings. An experimentally designed study might lead to interesting findings on the impact of these framing elements (leads, rhetoric, sources) on readers’ responses to this topic.

This study contributes to research on the media coverage of motherhood and to management scholarship on gender, parenthood and work.