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Paper short abstract

This paper pushes against discourses that present polygenic embryo screening or "algorithmic eugenics" as empowering for parents, particularly women. I instead read it as a form of female apotropaic labor, placing it within the lengthy human tradition of apotropaic magic surrounding reproduction.

Paper long abstract

As birth rates fall, parents are presented with new technological tools for managing reproductive risk, pouring greater resources into fewer children. Polygenic embryo screening tests for chromosomal abnormalities, monogenic conditions, and, most controversially, polygenic diseases and traits (i.e. intelligence). With proprietary algorithms trained on large swaths of data, such as the UK Biobank which combines the genomes and health histories of almost a million people, companies such as Orchid, Nucleus, and Heliospect use AI to rank embryos and determine the fitness of future offspring—what I call "algorithmic eugenics." This paper will explore the legal and ethical landscape of PES in two countries with a Eugenic legacy—Germany and the United States. Germany's 1990 Embryo Protection Act is one of the strongest in Europe, but medical associations are calling for a change. In the United States, PES is privatized and unregulated, and marketing campaigns position it as a consumer choice of one embryo over another. Turning to Deborah Lupton's assertion that the labor of risk management often falls to women, this paper pushes back against media narratives that laud these technologies as empowering or situate them among earlier feminist reproductive health projects, as described by Michelle Murphy. Instead, I theorize PES as yet another form of female apotropaic labor. Staying attuned to the very real technological limitations of PES, I place it in a lineage of human practices for managing reproduction as a site of radical epistemic opacity, such as the lengthy human tradition of apotropaic magic surrounding reproduction.