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-language proficiency, favourable exchange rates and tourist attractions. Overall, the South African egg donation economy is a paradigmatic example of the reshaping of global politics of reproduction through the normalisation and marketisation of assisted reproductive technology (ART) (Lie and Lykke, 2017 ). This chapter explores the biopolitical dimension of this particular local market for reproductive tissue, which is closely entwined with the global fertility industry. It revolves around the following twofold question. In which ways do Foucauldian biopolitics play out in the
chapter, I use the literature on racial matching and neo-eugenics as theoretical frameworks to make the argument that race is central to the egg donation process and this naturalisation of race in the process is a form of neo-eugenics. The repercussions of this resemble nineteenth- and twentieth-century eugenics and a desire to maintain the myth of racial purity, which would thereby indicate a possible resurgence of eugenics by reproductive technologies. Explorations such as this are relevant to understanding the ways in which race still asserts itself in our post
This book analyses the world of selective reproduction – the politics of who gets to legitimately reproduce the future – by a cross-cultural analysis of three modes of ‘controlling’ birth: contraception, reproductive violence, and repro-genetic technologies. The premise is that as fertility rates decline worldwide, the fervour to control fertility, and fertile bodies, does not dissipate; what evolves is the preferred mode of control. Although new technologies, for instance those that assist conception and/or allow genetic selection, may appear to be the antithesis of violent versions of population control, the book demonstrates that both are part of the same continuum. Much as all population control policies target and vilify (Black) women for their over-fertility, and coerce/induce them into subjecting their bodies to state and medical surveillance, assisted reproductive technologies and repro-genetic technologies have a similar and stratified burden of blame and responsibility based on gender, race, class, and caste. The book includes contributions from two postcolonial nations – South Africa and India – where the history of colonialism and the economics of neoliberal markets allow for some parallel moments of selecting who gets to legitimately reproduce the future. The book provides a critical interdisciplinary and cutting-edge dialogue around the interconnected issues that shape reproductive politics in an ostensibly ‘post-population control’ era. The contributions range from gender studies, sociology, medical anthropology, politics, science and technology studies, to theology, public health, epidemiology and women’s health, with the aim of facilitating an interdisciplinary dialogue around the interconnected modes of controlling birth and practices of neo-eugenics.
India is one of the world's fastest growing egg donation industries, contributing to a global in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) market worth US$15 billion and growing at a rate of 10% annually (Grand View Research, 2018 ). Although India's 2016 Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Bill aims to stringently police laws on third-party reproduction through surrogacy, the same legal framework does not exist for egg donation. The Indian Council of Medical Research has established guidelines under which egg donation should be practised; however
), the question of caste has received little attention (Madge, 2015 ). Responding to the lack of research on assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and caste, the aim of this chapter is to explore the significance of this intersection with ARTs in general and commercial surrogacy and egg donation in particular. We draw on in-depth interviews with Dalit feminists whose perspectives on ARTs are uncharted. Our analysis explicates the need to connect Dalit women's reproductive lives with broader questions of social inequalities that we theorise through the framework
and quality of care will be experienced in the country the patient is travelling to (Kotzé, 2020 : 245). However, in the majority of instances, affordability is given as one of the most significant reasons, as well as ‘a shortage of donor gametes in some countries’ (Wilson, 2016 : 49). The possible shortages of donors in certain countries, particularly egg donors, are also tied up with financial reasons, as one of the biggest motivations behind egg donation is financial. In the developed world, countries where there are strict regulations in terms of donor
force of racial imaginaries is especially acute when it comes to the way it shapes markets in egg ‘donation’, the colloquial descriptor for the process of ovarian stimulation and egg extraction to provide those eggs for a third party. International demand for the oocytes from white women (particularly those mediating the line between ‘acceptable whiteness’ that makes them sought after, and economic disadvantage which may compel women to provide), and high local demand both from South African patients (as white patients seeking ‘racial matches’ make
particular was how very different many of the comments to this article were, relative, for example, to the responses to an article about egg donation that had been run in the same comparatively centre-left UK national newspaper, the Guardian , a couple of years earlier (Saner, 2012 ). Reading Sebastian Mohr’s ( 2018 ) book Being a Sperm Donor served to reinforce this sense of gendered differences regarding the meanings of such donation. It also reinforced the sense that the production of a seemingly endlessly renewable resource, sperm, is entangled with an embodied
reproduction for lesbians and single women in France, prohibition on oocyte donation and surrogacy in Norway and Germany, and sanctions on commercial surrogacy in Greece and the United Kingdom (Pennings et al., 2008 ). ART laws present additional complexity in countries such as Norway. Norway bans commercial surrogacy, egg donation, and anonymous sperm donation on its soil in opposition
basic framework of rules governing assisted conception in the UK. The Act entrusted to the HFEA extensive powers to fill in the details of those rules and to regulate both the ethical and practical problems of assisted conception. The HFEA has to operate within the framework set by Parliament, but many crucial decisions were left to them. So, the HFEA has had to consider – should ovarian tissue be harvested from fetuses, should sister-to-sister egg donation be banned, should egg sharing be permitted? And these were examples of the HFEA’s less contentious business