Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I discuss the effects of the Covid pandemic and the recent war in Ukraine on transnational reproduction which is already marked by vulnerability and uncertainty. I suggest that such an investigation has important implications for a better understanding of reproductive justice.

Paper long abstract:

Medically assisted reproduction is almost always marked by some form of disruption as it is this disruption that makes medical intervention necessary in the first place. When, as a result of legal restrictions or prohibitive costs, intended parents need to travel and access fertility treatment in the form of cross-border reproductive care, it becomes even more susceptible to disruption and is often marked by a high degree of uncertainty. One example for such uncertainties and disruptions is the effect the clash of different national legal systems has on transnational surrogacy. As a result of the different ways in which countries award citizenship and parentage, the legal status of children born through surrogacy at the intersection of these different regulations may stay unclear for long periods of time, leaving considerable numbers of these children stateless or regarded as legal orphans until a solution is found. This not only affects the children themselves, but also the surrogates who carried them as well as the commissioning parents.

The Covid pandemic with its global travel restrictions or the recent war in Ukraine have vividly shown that such vulnerabilities and uncertainties increase considerably in times of crisis. In this paper, I take the example of transnational surrogacy to discuss the effects these two recent crises had and continue to have on transnational reproduction, on the persons involved in such arrangements, and the implications our understanding of these uncertainties has for an anthropological understanding of reproductive justice.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the changing international surrogacy and egg donation flows across Georgia and Kazakhstan, in times of disruption of reproductive activities, regulations, and connections due to the ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, another major reproductive hub in the region.

Paper long abstract:

Thanks to the permissive state legislation, low costs of medical treatment, and plentiful availability of willing surrogates and egg providers, certain post-Soviet states have emerged as global hubs for commercial surrogacy and egg donation. This paper examines the changes in the international surrogacy and egg donation flows across Georgia and Kazakhstan due to the ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, another major reproductive hub in the region.

As Ukraine faces a decline in the number of foreign couples seeking surrogacy and egg donation treatments, many fertility businesses relocate to Georgia and Kazakhstan--the two countries that position themselves as new international ‘reprohubs’ (Inhorn), offering fertility treatment to growing Chinese, European and local markets. This re-configuration drastically reshapes reproductive care landscape and mobilities domestically, regionally, and globally, generating public debate about the ethics of medically assisted reproduction around the movement of people, gametes, and technologies across borders. As surrogate mothers and egg donors are recruited across borders-with a growing number of women from Kazakhstan and Ukraine traveling to Georgia, different gender, kinship, religious, class and racial norms are shaping their experiences and affecting their understandings of work, family, and reproduction. Moreover, regulations are rapidly changing as Georgia considers banning the commercial surrogacy for foreign nationals, generating the outward flow of embryos/egg cells to Kazakhstan for international surrogacy arrangements. This study follows these changing reproductive mobilities in the post-Soviet context through participant observation in fertility clinics, and cryoshipping companies, interviews with medical professionals, agents, and surrogates and egg providers in Georgia and Kazakhstan.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes reproductive injustices faced by LGBT intending parents in Taiwan. It examines how pandemic-induced immobilities created new gendered configurations of stratified reproduction that have reoriented queer reproductive desires and reproductive justice initiatives.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyzes reproductive injustices faced by LGBT intending parents in Taiwan, a country that legalized same-sex marriage in 2019 but continues to limit assisted reproductive technology (ART) access to married, heterosexual couples. It uses the heightened reproductive exclusions imposed by Covid-19 border closures to reflect on structural inequalities that shape queer reproductive desires and reproductive justice initiatives. Drawing on sixty-three interviews with LGBT (intending) parents conducted between 2017-2023 and seven months of ethnographic research in Taiwan at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the paper examines how pandemic-induced immobilities enhanced gendered configurations of stratified reproduction for LGBT intending parents. Taiwan’s status as a Covid-19 “success story” rested in part on its early decision to close its borders to all but citizens and permanent residents (who faced stringent quarantine protocols on arrival), although other countries soon followed suit. Widespread border controls upended longstanding LGBT reproductive strategies of seeking ART access abroad, with Thailand, Cambodia, Japan, and the US frequent destinations for intending lesbian mothers and the US, Canada, and Russia offering legal or quasi-legal surrogacy options for intending gay fathers. Forced immobility stranded intending parents in reproductive limbo, creating different obstacles for gay fathers whose children were born to surrogates abroad during the pandemic and intending mothers who were unable to initiate or complete IVF cycles. These pandemic-induced disruptions spurred new activist initiatives that have coalesced in uneasy, post-pandemic coalitions of lawmakers, bureaucrats, and queer and feminist activists whose ideals of reproductive justice and equality may not always align.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper we discuss our analysis of how the multifaceted practice of mobile procreation is embedded in the cultural organizing mobility of the liminal Mexican-US borderlands.

Paper long abstract:

An extended literature (among others, Frohlick, 2007, 2015; Marre, San Román and Guerra, 2018; Marre and Briggs, 2009; Piscitelli, 2010, Simoni, 2015) includes, under the umbrella of “assisted procreation technologies” and/or “third party reproduction” (Howell and Melhuus, 2007) adoption and assisted reproductive technologies, such as insemination, in vitro fertilization with gamete and embryo donation, surrogacy and transnational sexual relations. These procreation technologies usually imply the need of assuming a degree mobility, from ways of transcending own cultural status quo, mindsets, traditions and taken for granted conventional social ways of reproducing, to physical displacements, travel, migrations or movements to other countries, either of humans or any human biological material. Beck (2012) exemplary illustrated procreative mobilities as “civil as well as scientific practices in the medical domain that do relations beyond the boundaries of states, societies or institutions by moving people, knowledge, ideas as well as biomedical ‘things’”. In this paper we discuss our analysis of how the multifaceted practice of mobile procreation is embedded in the cultural organizing mobility of the liminal Mexican-US borderlands. The research is based on a longitudinal intermittent multidisciplinary fieldwork produced between 2015 and 2022 in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico)-El Paso (US) borderland.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses indigenous women’s birth experiences in public hospitals of Northern Brazil (2022–2023) to explore, from an anthropological and decolonial perspective, the challenges in implementing the differentiated model of health care for Indigenous Peoples proscribed in National Policy.

Paper long abstract:

The National Policy for Health Care for Indigenous Peoples (Brazil, 2002) establishes the country's commitment to ensuring health care for indigenous peoples in line with their cultural practices, recognizing the relevance of a differentiated approach to meeting the specific needs of these communities. However, the effective implementation of this policy faces considerable challenges. Given this context, the article in question carries out a critical analysis of the implementation of the National Policy for Health Care for Indigenous Peoples in public maternity hospitals in the North of Brazil. The focus of this analysis is on the perspectives and experiences of indigenous women who used hospital birth services in the period between May 2022 and March 2023, covering the end of the third wave of Covid-19 and the beginning of the fourth wave in Brazil. Adopting an anthropological and decolonial approach, the qualitative exploratory research included 13 interviews with women from the Macuxi (RR), Wapixana (RR), Patamona (RR), Munduruku (PA) and Suruí (RO) ethnicities. Results indicate that the differentiated model of indigenous health care faces significant challenges when it comes to the care offered in public maternity hospitals in the North of the country, demonstrating that the effective promotion of this model has not yet been achieved, highlighting the need for improvements to better meet the specific demands of indigenous women.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how abortion advocates in Mexico respond to the widening legal access of abortion in Mexico to facilitate care for those now stranded in legally-restricted settings in the United States after the overturning of Roe. Findings inform visions of reproductive justice post-Roe.

Paper long abstract:

This paper takes the historic reversal of Roe v. Wade as its starting point, examining its reverberations across borders. To do so, I explore how abortion acompañantes in Mexico respond to the widening legal access of abortion in Mexico to facilitate abortion care for those now stranded in legally-restricted settings in the United States post-Dobbs. This study draws on 25 in-depth interviews with Mexican abortion advocates, supplemented by three months of participant observation conducted between 2022 and 2023. Participants ranged in age from 24 to 55. On average, participants had worked as acompañantes for 5 years, and ranged from 2 years to over 15 years. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, translated into English, and analyzed using a flexible coding approach. Findings highlight three central themes: (1) navigating shared risk; (2) disrupting notions of abortion care; and (3) building transnational solidarity. By highlighting the cross-border risks generated post-Dobbs, the findings underscore the importance of attending to transnational reproductive politics. Indeed, the advocates highlighted the ways in which legal changes transgress borders, noting how the fall of Roe v. Wade has generated ongoing implications in Mexico and beyond. In addition to the transgression of abortion legislation across borders, the findings of this study highlight how the model of care supported by abortion accompaniment collectives transgresses biomedical and legal understandings of abortion. The act of self-managed abortion care supported by abortion advocates points to a broader vision of reproductive justice in a post-Roe world.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, we will present preliminary findings from the REPROMOB study on how regulations and networks impact on abortion access in Colombia and Chile. Both countries have different regulations that leads to mobilities playing a pivotal role in abortion access

Paper long abstract:

Latin America is an example of a fragmented legal landscape that encompasses territories with both restrictive and liberal abortion regulations. Chile in 2017 enacted Law 21,030, which decriminalizes voluntary termination of pregnancy on three grounds: when the life of the person is at risk, when the embryo or fetus suffers from a lethal pathology, and in pregnancy due to rape, a regulation similar to those of most countries with restrictive laws in the region. In 2022, the Colombian Constitutional Court decriminalized abortion up to 24 weeks of gestation, making Colombia the country with the most liberal abortion law in Latin America. In both countries the implementation of the new regulations has been difficult and the number of legal abortions is less than expected, which leads to mobilities playing a pivotal role in abortion access.

Through interviews with experts, activists and people who had abortions, REPROMOB project is investigating how mobilities impact abortion access. In this paper, we will present preliminary findings from the study in Colombia and Chile.

Abortion travel is common in Colombia, as foreigners travel there to circumvent their own country’s restrictive laws. In addition, Colombian residents living in underserved areas often travel to big cities to access abortion services. In Chile, where the Law is very restrictive, traveling to have an abortion is rare. Most people use abortion pills in order to interrupt their pregnancy. As these pills are not produced in Chile some activists travel in order to get it or receive them via mail.

Paper short abstract:

Most European abortion laws allow care within given legal terms. These and other barriers may result in women and pregnant people deciding to self-manage their abortion or travel abroad for care. We explore the relationship between legal frameworks and pregnant people’s perceptions of safety.

Paper long abstract:

The majority of abortion legislations in European countries allow abortion on given grounds and consider illegal all terminations that take place outside such legal terms. Irrespective of abortion legislations, women and pregnant people may encounter barriers to access and decide to self-manage their abortion or they travel abroad to find care. Drawing on a 6-year research project on abortion travel in Europe, in this paper we explore whether and how women and pregnant people travelling abroad to obtain abortion have attempted self-managed abortion (SMA) prior to travelling, and what understandings of abortion drive their decisions. We especially unpack the relationship between legal frameworks and pregnant people’s perceptions and understandings of safety, and illustrate how criminalizing of some abortions leaves little room for meeting everyone’s abortion needs.

Paper short abstract:

Based on an ethnography conducted in the Netherlands and in Switzerland, this research shows how women traveling to the Netherlands to get an abortion are supported by health professionals and feminists and what these transnational abortions tell us more broadly on (im)mobilities for health care.

Paper long abstract:

Who and how are women traveling to get an abortion in the Netherlands? How are these people supported by health professionals working in Dutch abortion clinics and by pro-choice Dutch feminist collectives? What does these transnational abortions tell us more broadly on (im)mobilities for health care?

Based on an ethnography conducted in the Netherlands and in Switzerland, this talk aims at addressing these questions. By providing concrete empirical data and qualitative analysis from 19 interviews conducted with sexual health professionals (gynecologists, abortion doctors, nurses, and sexual counselors), feminists from three pro-choice collectives, and sexual health experts, as well as from a selection of public health documents, this research shows three main findings. First, what I call “abortion borders” in Europe are complex and not limited to national borders. This ethnography indeed shows for instance internal travels in the Netherlands from rural to urban areas, and also that doctors and activists are traveling themselves abroad. Secondly, abortion professionals and feminists have to adapt and take into account these complex moving borders in order to support women. Third, abortion borders and traveling shed light on intersectional inequalities. These key findings will be discussed by making use of the concept of reproductive justice that helps us to go beyond a human right perspective to a social justice one.

Paper short abstract:

Abortion is legal in Italy, but is complicated and hindered by several factors. I explore how feminist and pro-choice activism is organized on social network and uses virtual venues to give support to people who want to terminate a pregnancy and improve their agency.

Paper long abstract:

Abortion is legal in Italy inside the health facilities, but it's complicated by several factors, including the uneven distribution of services throughout the territory and the lack of up-to-date and effective information channels. The situation is aggravated by regional autonomy in health matters. In addition, the territorial network of family planning centers has been severely downsized after years of cutbacks, and the family planning centers themselves have become a hunting ground for the anti-abortion movement. Furthermore, feminist collectives have abandoned the kind of discursive practice about sexuality based on self-consciousness, widespread in the Seventies but not any more.

In this context, militant pro-choice groups are organized to guide pregnant people who want to have an abortion and to create spaces for mutual help in which to exchange experiences without being judged and in which to give each other strength and support. Support takes place mostly in the virtual environment, which guarantees anonymity. I’ll focus on some tele-self-help practices raised through platforms (particularly whatsapp, telegram and signal), intensified during the pandemic period and subsequently consolidated. I’ll also describe the most recent experience of an association network that formulated a guide based on the obstacles most frequently encountered by people who want an abortion. While conscientious objection remains a real problem, the analysis of the cases' histories mapped bottom up allows to highlight the obstacles that are less visible and known by the public but which are just as important in determining the quality of care and, therefore, of the abortion experience.