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Short abstract:

Reproductive technologies have created new forms of death and loss such as failed embryo implantation. Some patients, however, remake these losses by questioning the normative scripts of human reproduction. The paper adds human’s reproductive loss to the discussion about more-than-human loss.

Long abstract:

The paper is based on narrative interviews on loss and bereavement with women who had undergone fertility treatment in Switzerland. Reproductive technologies and discourses have ambivalently created new forms of loss and bereavement: due to home pregnancy testing devices early gestation can be confirmed and therefore be lost at a very early stage; some intended parents mourn the discard of their supernumerary IVF embryos (de Lacey 2017); and a multiple pregnancy created by IVF treatment may lead to fetal reduction. Accordingly, some research subjects mourn the decay of “[embryo] no. 11” documented on video by the fertility clinic or have been performing symbolic funeral rituals for expelled “tissue” after early miscarriage. Some interviewees, on the other hand, (also) grieve more abstract entities like fertility, identity, or normality. They unmake the losses during IVF-treatment by questioning the ontological and moral status of the loss object (between hope, tissue and/or a baby), the social ideals surrounding the reproductive life-course, natural parenthood, and genetic relation as well as the views, values and practices attached to human reproduction. They re-evaluate their wish for a child or plan to redirect their love and care to someone or something else in future. By sharing first data interpretation, I’d like to contrast a human-centricity of infertility treatments and pregnancy loss navigation with interviewee perspectives taking on a rather more-than-human approach.

Literature: De Lacey, S. (2017). Death in the clinic: women's perceptions and experiences of discarding supernumerary IVF embryos. Sociology of Health & Illness 39(3): 397–411.