Paper short abstract:

By use of auto-ethnography this presentation inquire into socio-technical imaginations of technologies to end or save lives with congenital heart defects. This methodology is both a diffractive reading, and a call for a situated feminist ethics of reproductive technologies of broken hearts.

Paper long abstract:

Born with only half a heart, a congenital heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), my firstborn died 9 years ago. While processing the grief, guilt and shame that was part of the experience of loosing a child, the questions: What if?; What then?; What now? constantly returned to provoke new questions. These questions not only focused on the loss, but more so on the existing normalizations and values regarding the uses of technology to either end or save lives with congenital heart defects.

In this auto-ethnographic presentation, I return to these questions. I am curious to understand what socio-technical imaginaries (Jasanoff 2015) that are at play in the media and in the uses of life ending and life saving technologies of children born to HLHS in Denmark. The what if-methodology is in this regard a way of doing diffractive readings (Haraway 1997, Barad 2007) and a call for a situated feminist ethics of reproductive technologies of broken hearts.