Paper short abstract:

I will present preliminary findings of an ethnographic research on embryo donation in Canada. It will be analyzed how the ethical issues related to embryo donation both shape reproduction and relatedness meanings.

Paper long abstract:

Worldwide, stored embryos are described as problematic, since a significant proportion of them are labeled as “surplus” for reproductive needs and remain cryopreserved indefinitely. There are different solutions for it, ranging from discarding extra embryos to embryo donation for research or for family building purposes. Regardless of the chosen solution, embryo disposition is an ethical contested issue not only at and at political level (Cromer 2023), but also both for patients who need to make decisions about embryos' fate, and for clinics which face administrative financial dilemmas, as well as ethical and legal challenges (Lyerly et al. 2010; O'Brien 2010).

Even if embryo donation is one of the last options chosen by patients in the realm of reproductive technologies (Guerzoni forthcoming), it is a fertility solution on the rise (Huele et al. 2020). Therefore as an emerging issue, embryo donation brings heated debates on clashing understandings of life, right, ownership, human dignity, and kinship, being a matter of contention. This paper shows preliminary findings of InVitroFutures, an ongoing comparative ethnographic fieldwork on embryo donation between Canada and Spain. I will focus on the Canadian study by showing how the ethical issues related to embryo donation - raised by embryo donors, embryo receivers, IVF specialists and embryo donation agencies' employees -both shape reproduction and relatedness meanings.

Paper short abstract:

Food is increasingly understood as a pivotal factor in facilitating or preventing fertility, fetal development and the fertility of future generations. Parallels between technologies of assisted reproduction and of food, I suggest, open up new pathways to think about stratified reproduction.

Paper long abstract:

While research on assisted reproduction has focused technologies that facilitate or prevent conception, the role of food and nutrition in shaping reproduction has been less explored. Medical research, epigenetic studies and the growing fertility industry suggest that following nutritional guidance and maintain a “healthy” diet impacts fertility rates as well as fetal outcomes as well as, potentially, the fertility of one’s children and grandchildren.

Drawing from ethnographical data of several research projects on experiences of pregnancy and child feeding in Switzerland over the past decade, I reveal a shifting understanding of nutrition as a pivotal factor enabling or disabling reproduction. I build on E. Yates-Doerr’s (2011) suggestion that nutrition may be regarded as a “reproductive technology” to exploring parallels with assisted reproduction. Nutrition introduces technologies (to track, measure and evaluate nutrition) into people’s food practices that transform eating and feeding practices. These technologies introduce new reproductive responsibilities, as reproductive subjects and parents are encouraged to think about the impact of their dietary practices on their offspring.

Much like access to assisted reproductive technologies, access to nutritional resources and healthy food is stratified lines of class and race. I contend that the unequal distribution of access to healthy food transforms food into a vector embodying social inequalities. By employing the framework of "stratified reproduction," I argue that understanding nutrition within reproductive experiences broadens our comprehension of socially valued reproduction.

Paper short abstract:

Through media analysis, two Turkish cases of techno-birth —brain death pregnancy and transplanted womb— will be examined to assess new biotechnological interventions and the evolving symbolic-material boundaries and potentials of women's bodies, living or deceased, in the 21st century.

Paper long abstract:

In 2008, Yıldız Alçı, a 26-year-old woman who was 24 weeks pregnant, suffered from meningitis, resulting in brain death. To sustain the foetus in her womb, she was kept on life support. Three weeks later, Alçı’s disconnection from life support resulted in a popularly termed “miracle birth,” a first in Turkey and the 14th case worldwide. In 2011, another biotechnological birth occured as a womb from a brain-dead donor was transplanted to 23-year-old Derya Sert, born without a uterus. The hope was to offer a viable alternative for surrogacy. This first-ever attempt at a cadaveric uterus transplant led to a live birth almost a decade later, followed by the immediate removal of the transplanted uterus. In both cases, the uterus fulfilled its "function" at childbirth, prompting the following question: To what extent are women's bodies, living or deceased, open to new biotechnological interventions and operations for (bio)value extractions in the realm of birth?

Combining feminist science and technology studies with medical anthropology, this paper will address this question to reveal how reproduction becomes a socio-technological site of (re)making life and death. In this context, women’s bodies are instrumentalized for both ideological and biological reproduction of the sacred (heteronormative) family. Through the exploration of media representations of these two cases of techno-birth, this paper intends to elucidate the new forms that the boundaries and potentials of women's reproductive capacities have taken in the 21st century. This occurs concurrently with the politicization and technologization of reproduction in selectively pronatalist Turkey and beyond.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the views of best practices of women who, having been surrogates, have become professionals employing “technologies of alignment” to accompany other women who become surrogates, helping them navigate a context loaded with biomedical, technological, legal and relationship issues.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropologically, the reproductive process is mediated by cultural symbols, social representations and visions of the body, pregnancy, biology and kinship.

In commercial surrogacy in the USA, gestation-reproduction is situated in a context conformed by diverse actors and technologies. While researchers have investigated surrogates’ experiences in different contexts (Teman 2010; Pande 2014; Berend 2016), we will explore visions regarding best practices of former surrogates who have become professionals accompanying other surrogates. Siegl’s (2018) concept of “technologies of alignment” is useful here to refer to the work these surrogate coordinators do: they seek a balance between providing close care and keeping an appropriate emotional distance so as to ensure a “nice journey” for surrogates, taking on different roles, offering information and helping to navigate a context loaded with biomedical, legal and relationship issues. The role of these professionals in surrogacy agencies is essential to understanding how surrogates experience their process of pregnancy and conceptualize their relationships with the baby, medical technologies (Thompson 2005) and the intending parents. Based on ethnographic research, we will present the visions of women who, having been surrogates themselves, decide to work for agencies as coordinators or create their own surrogacy agencies. These professionals generate a culture regarding what it means to do reproduction for others through surrogacy in appropriate and ethical terms. In this paper, we consider the socio-material conditions that make it possible to discuss reproduction for others in these terms and present profiles of women who express their personal and professional satisfaction with their experiences.

Paper short abstract:

We interviewed interlocuters with MRKH to understand how uterus transplant surgery impacts the very community it is targeted to aid. Through the technology of UTx the ‘doing’ of gestational pregnancy is positioned as a reproductive ‘choice’ for people with MRKH entailing normative assumptions.

Paper long abstract:

Uterus transplants (UTx) are currently undergoing development in clinical trials worldwide, to date, around 100 of these surgeries have resulted in the live births of around 40 healthy babies. This surgery has been pioneered in response to a specific condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH), where a biological female with XX chromosomes and secondary female sex characteristics is born without a uterus and an underdeveloped vaginal canal while still having ovaries and fallopian tubes. Formerly, people with MRKH only had options of surrogacy or adoption if they wanted to become parents, if accessible.

But UTx promises more than just infertility treatment – it is the opportunity to ‘do’ gestational pregnancy and ‘undo’ MRKH. Yet acknowledging this requires an examination of the social and cultural ideas of what the desired experience of pregnancy and parenthood is also entail ideas of what a normal body is.

In this study, interlocuters with MRKH participated in interviews in order to understand how this transplant surgery impacts upon the very community it is targeted to aid. Biological sex variation is pathologized in healthcare systems and those with MRKH find themselves heavily medicalised resulting in particular forms of care, infertility treatment, and in some cases UTx. Through the technology of UTx the ‘doing’ of gestational pregnancy is positioned as a reproductive ‘choice’ for people with MRKH as though it is equivalent to other forms of family formation, or decisions to remain childless. It also carries specific orientations towards what is considered the normative gendered body.

Paper short abstract:

In vitro gametogenesis is a technology in the making to produce eggs and sperm. Lab knowledge interprets reproduction as regeneration, the inner capacity of cells to reshape their fertility. Reproductive technologies change meaning, from technofix to nurturance.

Paper long abstract:

In vitro gametogenesis is a technology in the making to produce eggs and sperm. Lab knowledge interprets reproduction as regeneration, the inner capacity of cells to reshape their fertility. Reproductive technologies change meaning, from technofix to nurturance.

The anthropology of assisted reproductive technologies has primarily focused on infertility and family making practices. In that perspective, reproductive biotechnologies are understood as tools used to circumvent infertility by providing techno-fixes.

A small body of literature has focused on laboratory work, embryo culture and stem cell research, looking at the intertwining of science, biotechnologies and infertility. Along this line, I have done fieldwork in a basic research laboratory based in Cambridge (UK), where gamete differentiation from embryonic stem cells is the object of experimentation.

In vitro gametogenesis is a technology in the making which application is still to be invented using human cells. This said, laboratory knowledge production already gives critical interpretation of reproductive cells and their relationship to technology.

Observing the daily life of some biologists and running interviews, this paper describes the biological knowledge that is currently emerging from the research on in vitro gametogenesis. It argues that fertility is interpreted as a regenerative process. The concept of regeneration points at the inner capacity of cells to reshape their fertility. Doing so, it also opens up a different understanding of reproductive biotechnologies. Not so much understood as techno-fixes, they are built to nurture fertility.

Paper short abstract:

The study investigates regulations and regulatory debates on multifetal pregnancy reduction (MFPR) in Italy and Japan. By a comparative analysis, the study explores how technologies and practices surrounding MFPR have developed in interaction with respective MAR and abortion regulations.

Paper long abstract:

This study investigates multifetal pregnancy reduction (MFPR) as a case for the interactive development of regulations and medical technologies surrounding reproduction. MPFR is a procedure to reduce one or more live foetuses in multiple pregnancies, whose incidence is significantly higehr in pregnancies induced by medically assisted reproduction (MAR). While MFPR reduces maternal/fetal health risks associated with multiple pregnancies, it invokes legal and ethical issues also relevant to abortion and life selection. By looking comparatively at the cases of Italy and Japan, the study explores how technologies and practices surrounding MFPR have been developed in interaction with respective MAR and abortion regulations, shaping the stratified experiences of multiple pregnancy. Drawing on the tradition of comparative studies of policies in STS, the study conducts interpretive analysis on MFPR-related litigations, debates among the national gyneacologist associations as well as government committees. The study shows how reproductive technologies and practices interacting with the (absence of) regulations shape the experiences of multiple gestation and MFPR in the two countries. The analysis is prospected to demonstrate that the highly regarded status of embryo in the Italian MAR law has paradoxically rendered MFPR more avaiable, whereas the aversion of strict regulations on reproductive technologies in Japan has allowed the development of technologies and practices to prevent multiple gestation following MAR while leaving both the practitioner and the patient who resort to MFPR legally vulnerable.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the rhetoric of FemTech in Nairobi, Kenya, this paper examines the implications of the private tech-sector's ‘investment’ in reproductive technologies beyond market expansion by questioning how it actively shapes narratives on how to best 'disrupt reproduction' in low-resource settings.

Paper long abstract:

The emergence of Female Technology (FemTech), a growing digital health market specifically aimed at women’s sexual and reproductive health, raises concerns about control and power over women’s reproductive bodies and the value of their reproductive health data. While smartphone apps and data-driven diagnostic devices expeditiously collect, analyse and store personal data on reproductive bodies and behaviour, they seem particularly attractive for low-resource contexts in which access to healthcare facilities and reproductive services remain limited. Not least the COVID-19 pandemic and its exacerbation of inequalities in Sub-Saharan Africa intensified pervasive shifts to digitalise and privatise healthcare delivery across Kenya – where private companies increasingly fill the void of healthcare provision.

Based on 8-months of ethnographic fieldwork in Kenya, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic between 2021-2022, this contribution focuses on HealthTech startups in Kenya’s tech-ecosystem ‘Silicon Savannah’ and health practitioners/patients in private health clinics across multiple informal settlements in Nairobi. Analysing the narration of reproductive technologies such as ultrasound screening devices, digital fertility tracking, or IVF as ‘empowering’ tools to do, undo, or prevent pregnancies, it offers a critical analysis of the rhetorical dimension in which national and international tech-enterprises operate. In this dimension, the rhetoric of disruption serves as a discursive strategy for capitalist expansion through the introduction of FemTech as a novel data-driven market. The paper argues, that the private sector's investment in reproductive technologies goes beyond market expansion by discussing the adverse implications of narrating FemTech as an opportunity to disrupt (in)fertility, pregnancy, and reproduction in low-resource settings

Paper short abstract:

Sterilization is one of the oldest reproductive technologies known today. Using an intersectional analysis, I analyze how the colonial history of Puerto Rican women has constrained their reproductive freedom and led them to have one of the highest rates of sterilization in the world.

Paper long abstract:

Sterilization is one of the oldest reproductive technologies known today. In the United States and Europe sterilization has its origins in the racist, sexist, and classist ideology of the eugenic movement. Yet, in the 21st century, sterilization is one of the most widely-used methods of fertility control in the world. In the U.S. women's reproductive rights have been eroding. The Supreme Court's Dobbs decision nullified Roe v. Wade, making abortion illegal in fourteen conservative states. The Dobbs decision has affected poor women unequally. Poor women do not have the income to travel to states where abortion is legal. Consequently, the rate of sterilization has been on the rise among poor racialized women in the United States and the U.S. commonwealth territory, Puerto Rico, where my research took place. In 1996 the rate of sterilization among married women in Puerto Rico 45%. Using an intersectional analysis, I analyze how the colonial history of Puerto Rican women has constrained their reproductive freedom. The reproductive technology of sterilization of Puerto Rican women in Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland raises ethical questions about sterilization as well as other methods of assisted reproductive technology such as invitro-fertilization, gamete donors, and transnational surrogacy. These questions are: Who controls reproductive technology? Who has access to it and how is it used? What are the ideologies that justify it? How do we ensure that these practices are not exploitative? How do women fight for their reproductive freedom in this difficult global climate?

Paper short abstract:

Framed as fertility management, I look at the various technologies to facilitate, time and prevent birth used by formally employed women in Lagos. These methods are a crucial part of their strategies to make family and career compatible.

Paper long abstract:

By 2050, Nigeria is projected to be the fourth most populous country worldwide. The birth rate of over five leads to concerns around overpopulation and its consequences. Contrary to countries with too low birth rates, there is no need to encourage women to have children. But: In a context where women are expected to work inside and outside the house while having several children, the compatibility of family and career may not be the topic of political debates, but certainly for these women themselves. Lagos, Nigeria’s and Africa‘s biggest city, offers a great range of technologies to facilitate, prevent and time births, from family planning to fertility clinics providing services like IVF, sex selection or surrogacy. My PhD project and currently ongoing research (04/2023 - 05/2024) focus on formally employed women like nurses, teachers and others, and how they manage their fertility. This means making sure to have the desired number of children at the right time in their careers, also through methods from contraception to egg freezing.

Therefore, I propose to contribute with a paper on the different methods and technologies that women in Lagos use in order to realize their aspirations, goals and role ideals in their private and work life. Fertility management is a crucial strategy to make family and career compatible for women all over the world, but especially in a context where the demands in these two areas can often be very contradicting and there is mostly little support from partners, employers or the government.