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- Convenors:
-
Nancy Anne Konvalinka
(Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia)
Ana María Rivas (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
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- Stream:
- Body, Affects, Senses, Emotions
- Location:
- Aula 1
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 16 April, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
ARTs with gamete donation and gestational surrogates defy the biogenetic conception of western kinship by using "third parties" to produce descendants. Acknowledging and assigning roles to these new figures is a challenge for all involved: receiving families, donors, surrogates, and descendants.
Long Abstract:
Assisted Reproduction Techniques and Gestational Surrogacy open the way for the agreed-upon participation of third parties in family formation. This participation surpasses the traditionally-established limits of two parents (man and woman) in the conception of children, violating the principles of bilaterality and natural conception. The experience of these techniques becomes a process of shaping subjectivities that leads the people that use them -receiving families and donors/surrogates- to modify a biogenetic conception of kinship in the direction of an intentional conception: procreative will and childrearing are what construct kinship for some -the families- and de-construct it for others -donors and surrogates. Ethnographic research offers both cases in which the intentional parents avoid visibilizing third-party participation in the conception of their children and cases in which they imagine new roles for these people in their discourses on their family formation or even in their family life itself. In this panel, we will explore 1) the roles granted or not granted to these third parties -gamete donors and gestational surrogates- by parents and children in their families, 2) donors' and surrogates' representations of their relations of (dis)connectedness with the receiving families and the descendants conceived through their intervention, 3) the role of assisted reproduction centers, surrogacy companies or agencies, and legal frameworks have in contributing to this (dis)connection
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 16 April, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
Assisted conception using donated semen developed initially within an ideology of secrecy and anonymity. The legal provision or obligation now for non-anonymity, in an increasing number of countries, highlights ambivalence about the kinship role of donors.
Paper long abstract:
Donor assisted conception using donated semen was developed in the UK as a means to circumvent male infertility so as to enable married women to become mothers. Anonymity was insisted upon or colluded with, by infertility clinics in order to protect the institution of marriage. However an opposing view noted that anonymity deceived the children conceived with donor semen, and might cause obstacles in tracking genetically inherited conditions.
Research in the UK amongst infertility specialists, and interviews with doctors who had donated anonymously when they were medical students, has revealed an ambivalent and complex understanding of kinship, and of the relationship between the social and the biological framing of fatherhood. A significant finding was that genetic connection was seen as likely to mean physical and other resemblances between donor and offspring, suggesting that tracking the genes plays a part in assigning kinship roles.
Paper short abstract:
According to the new Polish Law on Infertility (2015) each surplus embryo is now guaranteed to be transferred. For many patients the above results in compulsory "embryo donation / prenatal adoption". I will analyse this situation both from the perspective of the patients and anthropology of kinship.
Paper long abstract:
In November 2015 the new law on infertility treatment was entered into force in Poland. According to its provisions, surplus embryos must not be destroyed or donated for scientific research. Each embryo with preserved development potential is now guaranteed to be transferred. For tens of thousands of couples who have surplus embryos but do not plan on having any more children this means that they are forced to transfer them despite their reproductive plans or to donate the embryos. The regulations apply to all existing embryos, including embryos created before the new law was enforced. For all the patients who are not legitimate (i.e. single women and lesbian couples) or are not willing to transfer or donate their surplus embryos the above results in compulsory donation. After 20 years of storage without patients' consent or even knowledge the embryos will be overtaken and disposed as so called "embryo adoption". The new law on infertility has been announced in Polish media to be "a successful compromise between medical liberalism and bioethics." By analysing this political decision from an anthropological perspective, I will ask the following: what this transition means for definition and practice of the kinship? How the Polish patients evaluate this solution and what social and ethical costs will be entailed for people undergoing ART in the past and in the future? What is the relation between donation and adoption in Poland and what reasons lied behind perception of the surplus embryo as an adopted child to be?
Paper short abstract:
Focused on wet nursing and human milk donation, the goal of this paper is to expose that the current debates on surrogacy and fragmented maternity, due to advances in assisted reproductive technologies, and the relationship between kinship and market, are not necessarily new phenomena in Europe
Paper long abstract:
Human milk has long been linked to the construction of motherhood, with breastfeeding and maternity constituting a cultural ideal in many societies. However, what happens when breast milk does not come from the biological mother but from another woman, a hired wet-nurse or from a breast milk "donation" in a milk bank? Can we talk about fragmented motherhood? Considering this third party involvement in the reproductive process, the goal of this presentation is to expose that the current debates on fragmented maternity, motivated by advances in assisted reproductive technologies, and the resulting relationship between kinship and market (commodification of kinship), are not necessarily new phenomena in Europe. In order to illustrate the analogy between wet-nurses and surrogacy today, and by extension trying to bring new theoretical insights into the study of kinship- which will imply to broaden our definition of biological reproduction when breaking conceptual borders between reproduction (blood/ genes) and nutrition (human milk)- two ethnographic studies will be analyzed. The first one, more historical, will be based on the role of the Pasiega domestic wet-nurse in the construction of milk kinship once her milk circulated and was shared through salaried lactation in Spain, and a second one, within the context of transnational Muslim communities in Barcelona, focused on the construction milk kinship among two or more infants not biologically related until the moment of shared lactation, when accepting milk from a women donor in a milk bank.
Paper short abstract:
This paper is an ethnographic study of former gestational surrogates (United States) who create their own surrogacy agencies. These women speak of how their own experiences have shaped their implementation of "best practices" regarding intending parent and surrogate relationships in their agencies.
Paper long abstract:
Many ethnographies offer descriptions and analyses of the experiences of gestational surrogacy of intending parents and/or of gestational surrogates (Ragoné 1994, Thompson 2005, Teman 2010, Bharadwaj 2012 & 2016, Dasgupta & Dasgupta 2014, Pande 2014, Rudrappa 2015, Deomampo 2016, among others) and of their mutual expectations regarding the relationship that is, or is not, forged through this practice. Many of these ethnographies also deal with the role of clinics or agencies (depending on how surrogacy is managed in different countries), and the professionals who work in them, in shaping or blocking the relationships between intending parents and gestational surrogate. This paper, based on interview material from ethnographic fieldwork in the framework of a group of research projects, will discuss the interesting case of former gestational surrogates in the United States who have later created their own surrogacy agencies. Apart from the perception of an economic opportunity through their own participation in gestational surrogacy, these women express their intention to do it "better" in many ways. They speak about what they were happy or unhappy with in their own experiences as gestational surrogates and explain how they have created better conditions for gestational surrogates in their agencies and of how they pair intending parents and gestational surrogates who have similar expectations of relationships and conceptions regarding this practice. This research will address not only the gestational surrogates' own experiences, but their implementation what they consider to be "best practices" regarding intending parent and surrogate relationships in the agencies they create.
Paper short abstract:
L'objectif de cette communication est d'analyser la valeur que les donneuses d´ovocytes attribuent aux connexions biogénétiques dans la génération de liens avec la progéniture conçue grâce à leur don et la manière dont elles construisent / déconstruisent la maternité en relation avec ces enfants.
Paper long abstract:
L'objectif de cette communication est d'analyser les représentations et les images que les donneuses d'ovocytes élaborent de la progéniture conçue grâce à leur don; la valeur qu'elles attribuent aux connexions biogénétiques dans la génération de liens avec ces enfants et les stratégies qu'elles utilisent pour construire / déconstruire la maternité en relation avec eux. Nous considérons qu'il est particulièrement important de prendre en compte le cadre juridique espagnol qui établit l'anonymat du don afin de comprendre la façon dont les donneuses conçoivent et représentent les relations avec leur progéniture génétique. Les données présentées ici font partie d'un projet de recherche financé par le Ministère de l'Economie et de la Recherche espagnol (2016-2019) et elles ont été obtenues à partir de 38 entretiens approfondis aux doneuses d´ovocytes et l´observation, pendant une année, dans des consultations gynécologiques et psychologiques en deux centres de procréation medicalement assistée à Madrid.