Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates into the relatively recent, but ever growing, phenomenon of ‘reproductive travelling’ between Sweden and the Baltics. Particular attention is paid to ‘donor discourses’ amongst the recipients of donor eggs and embryos, and the ineradicable ‘memory’ of the anonymous donor.

Paper long abstract:

In 1978, the world's first 'test-tube' baby was born via in vitro fertilization (IVF). Today, there should be little doubt that this symbolic event has changed human reproduction as it had, up to that point, been known and practiced. This technological revolution has to a significant extent "diversified, globalised, and denaturalised" what had previously been taken for granted. Since, not only have assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) developed and spread throughout the world at a rapid pace, but this has given rise to a global market of cross-border reproductive care.

My research investigates into the relatively recent, but ever growing, phenomenon of 'reproductive travelling', whereby women from, in this case, Sweden travel to private fertility clinics in the former Soviet-state of Latvia as receivers of egg and embryo donation. As part of my developing study, this presentation will, based on interviews and internet material from infertility forums, focus on issues pertaining to the ways in which the recipients of donor eggs and embryos deal with the fact that their future child will unavoidably bear the genetic trace of an anonymous donor, and thus constitute the 'memory' of a person whom they have never met and of whom they know very little. How do they, for example, speak of donor anonymity, choice of a suitable donor, honesty and secrecy in relation to relatives and their future child, and a (real or imagined) pregnancy which has materialised only on the condition of the availability of the tissue and genome of an Other woman?