Convened and moderated by Dr. Anika König (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, FU Berlin)

Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) are controversially discussed within both public discourse and feminist circles. While some see these technologies as tools of patriarchal oppression, others regard them as liberating and a matter of personal choice, and while many scholars of reproduction have pointed out that due to their high costs, ARTs contribute to inequality and stratified reproduction (i.e. the encouragement of certain people to reproduce, while discouraging others to do so), others have shown that ARTs also have the potential to decrease inequalities, especially when it comes to non-heteronormative family models. On the other hand, however, we have seen that most such technologies are normalized over time as they are used by ever-increasing numbers of people, becoming more common and well-known. For example, in-vitro fertilization, the creation of embryos outside the human body in a petri dish, has become a standard procedure in fertility treatment which, in contrast to the years after its introduction in the 1980s, is rarely questioned anymore. Yet, newer technologies and those that include third persons or artificial body parts, are the subject of fierce debates. This is particularly true for procedures that are not primarily employed as a treatment of fertility but, rather, as a precautionary measure, as is the case with ‘social freezing’; for arrangements such as gestational surrogacy where a person carries a child for others, often in exchange for money; for highly complex treatments which are not strictly ‘necessary’, such as uterus transplants; and for technologies that are currently developed, but do not yet exist and which open up new spaces for ethical debate, as is the case with artificial womb technologies.

At this event, we will investigate these highly controversial reproductive technologies through a feminist lens and discuss their social and ethical implications

Panelists:

Dr. Anindita Majumdar (Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad)

Dr. Lucy van de Wiel (Kings College London)

Dr. Nicola Williams (Lancaster University)

The sessions will be recorded and available under the following Link:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZLmXhRGuEQuoRxqHwQZ1iw/featured

Organizer: Dr. Sabina García Peter  (MvBZ)

More information: mvbz@fu-berlin.de

Registration: www.mvbz.fu-berlin.de/registration-tfd