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Paper short abstract:

Reproductive futurism permeates clinicians' visions of the future of assisted reproduction in a study on private fertility clinics in Spain and a study on uterus transplants. Current practices with third-party participants are posited as obsolete and waiting for technoscientific innovations.

Paper long abstract:

A range of procedures in assisted reproduction currently rely upon third-party assistors such as gamete donors and surrogates to enable successful reproduction or gestation. In this paper we consider the reproductive futurism in interviews, media statements and writings by IVF professionals gathered as part of two studies: one an ethnographic study on private fertility clinics in Spain; another on Uterus transplants. Clinicians describe their hopes for a future where third-party participants are removed from the scheme of assisted conception. In Spain clinicians express that having to deal with third party assistors is a tiresome burden that, according to them, will soon come to an end thanks to technoscientific innovations. The improvements of the vitrification techniques leading to the routinization of social egg freezing, the development of the artificial wombs, and specially, the advances in techniques to derive gametes from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), are usually pictured as much desired and awaited techniques that will change Spanish fertility clinics for the best. Within the scientific literature work on uterus transplantation is undertaken with a vision of the bio-engineered womb, again removing the problematic surrogate, or even uterus donor from gestation. Through the lens of Marina Garcés’ concept of ‘the posthumous condition’ (2017), we contend that the perceived liminality of the use of third-party participants, that is, the idea that these practices are an obsolete “botched job” only waiting for technoscientific innovations, prevents important debates on the current problems related to them to take place.