Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the ways in which ideas and discourses on safety and potentiality that appear alongside biotechnical and biomedical aspects of assisted reproduction (ART), child’s identity, or concepts of family and kinship shape the contemporary debates on legal regulation of ART, and specify approaches to their interpretation by law.

Paper long abstract:

In 2002-2005 a team of researchers from seven European countries joined together under an international project 'The Public Understanding of Genetics: a cross-cultural and ethnographic study of the 'new genetics' and social identity' (QLG7-CT-2001-01668) funded by EC and headed by social anthropologists from the University of Manchester to investigate the ways in which different publics understand the 'new genetics' in the areas of family and kinship, race and ethnicity, governance and legislation, and food. Lithuanian researchers participating at the project focused on the local thinking on assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and genetics in relation to identities of ethnicity, family and kinship.

The paper intends to revisit the research in Lithuania after ten years, and to discuss the aspects of implementation of biotechnological innovations the ethnographic updating brings anew, and the ways in which they respond to previous findings. This time it sets the debate on the normative assessment of ART as the conceptual point of departure and as an empirical example. The paper analyses the ways in which ideas and discourses on safety and potentiality that appear alongside biotechnological and biomedical aspects of assisted reproduction, child's identity, concepts of family and kinship shape the contemporary debates on legal regulation of ART. It underlines that safety and potentiality appear here as contested sites and principles that however create a movement in specifying the legal thinking on ART in Lithuania.