Week 22 Lecture 2 (Reproductive Justice) Flashcards
WHAT IS REPRODUCTION?
According to Rene Almeling, reproduction refer to the biological and social process of having or not having children.
Reproduction affects 100% of the population in some capacity; it is about more than a series of individual biological events
*Many need to prevent reproduction
*Even if you choose not to have children, society has norms on parenthood
WHAT IS REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE?
- How does reproductive justice differ from “pro- choice” activism?
Moves beyond pro choice movements which are the rite and access to abortion services.
*ALSO ability to raise and have children in safe and healthy environments
- Reproductive justice moves beyond the pro-
choice movement’s singular focus on
abortion and recognizes that the right to
abortion will not resolve the barriers to
having children that many people of colour
and low-income people face - Reproductive justice (and freedom) thus
requires the ability not only to prevent
parenthood, but also to have and raise
children in safe and healthy environments - Reproductive justice therefore also includes issues such as access to food, health care, employment, and housing
Reproduction TOPICS OF INTEREST
TO SOCIOLOGISTS
- Pregnancy
- Birth
- Contraception
- Abortion
- Sterilization
- Infertility
- Adoption
- Reproductive technology (e.g., IVF)
- Surrogacy
- Egg and sperm donation
Reproduction FROM BIO TO
SOCIOLOGICAL
Until recently, reproduction was seen and studied from a biological standpoint
Movements of reproductive justice challenged this view which led to social scientific analyses of reproduction as being both social and biological
Social scientific research tends to fall into three areas:
1.Pregnancy and birth
2.Contraception and abortion
3.Infertility and assisted reproduction
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS IN CANADA
Abortion
- 1988 - R v Morgentaler – “forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a fetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations, is a profound interference with a woman’s body and thus a violation of her security of the person.” – Chief Justice Brian Dickson
- Made it so that abortion is treated like any other medical procedure
- 1989 – Tremblay v Daigle – Supreme Court ruled that a father has no legal right to veto a woman’s abortion decision
- 1990-1991 – Bill C-43 – PC gov (led by Brian Mulroney) attempted to pass a bill sentencing doctors to two years in jail for providing abortions where a woman’s health was not at risk – bill died in the senate
- 2018 - Safe Access to Abortion Services Act – safe zones around abortion services where protesters cannot be
IVF in Ontario – OHIP covers one cycle per lifetime
Sterilization
- 1928 – Sexual Sterilization Act – Alberta introduced act promoting surgical sterilization of those deemed “mental defectives”, a practice in effect until 1972
- disabled people
- indigenous people
- Currently - access to sterilization – who has easy access? Who is discouraged?
PREGNANCY AND BIRTH
PREGNANCY AND SURVEILLANCE:
- Some soc literature has critiqued medical practices around reproduction for the ways
women’s bodies become routinely monitored - E.g., testing technologies, risk assessments, etc.
Ex. judging pregnant woman for drinking coffee
DECIDING WHETHER OR NOT TO HAVE
CHILDREN:
- Medically – “high-risk” pregnancies, health reasons, genetic traits, etc.
- Whose bodies are more likely to be deemed “high risk”?
- Socially – what are cultural norms we have around pregnancy and birth and how do these impact peoples’ decisions regarding whether to have children?
- age
- married before
- breast feeding vs. formula
- heteronormative
CONTRACEPTION AND ABORTION
Research tends to focus on questions of:
- ACCESS – what impacts access?
- USE – aside from access, what impacts
people’s decisions to use contraception or
proceed with abortions
* Why do people choose not to use
contraception?
- religious reasons
- distrust in western medicine
- health side effects
* Abortion, stigma, and misinformation
Myth 1: abortion is a form of birth control if readily available
Myth 2 : abortion causes breast cancer and infertility
Myth 3 : If we decriminalize abortion, people can get it whenever they want. REALITY: late-term abortions quite rare
* Gender and contraception - EFFECTIVENESS
*Do misconceptions impact use - PUBLIC OPINION
*how public opinion shapes policy and how policy shapes public opinion
INFERTILITY & ASSISTED REPRODUCTION
Assisted Reproduction
* Medically, this can involve things like IVF, gestational surrogacy, and
egg and sperm donation
* Socially?
Mental load of going through these treatments and ways social relations change meaning of these biomedical practices, also think of intersections of gender and sexuality.
- What may Queer couples need to engage in when accessing reproductive technology
* Accessibility?
Infertility & Stigma (Whiteford & Gonzalez 1995)
* Interviewed 25 U.S. women about their experiences with infertility
* “The medicalized story of infertility is one of possibility, of future interventions, of new processes, and new diagnostic techniques. All
too often it is the story of one more try, one more cycle, or one more treatment. The lived experience is all too often one of failure, the
failure of the treatment and the perceived failure of the women.”
* Research challenges biomedical framings of women’s experiences with infertility
PREIMPLANTATION GENETIC DIAGNOSIS – THE ‘NEW’ EUGENICS?
EUGENICS – arranging reproduction within a human population to increase heritable characteristics regarded as desirable and decrease heritable characteristics that are undesirable
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) – a form of prenatal testing where embryos are tested pre-implantation for genetic defects
Concerns that it will eventually be used for eugenics or the selection of certain characteristics over others (e.g., sex); calls for its strict regulation
The decision-making process for using PGD
(Garzon et al. 2017)
- five themes
1. motivated by healthy children
2. decisions are ultimately impactd by time money, energy and emotions that are required of this process
3. concerns over legistics and ethics of disgarding unviable embryos
4. sense of responsibilty to use available technologies
5. it’s complicated, often involving all these themes
ALMELING 2007: EGG AGENCIES &
SPERM BANKS
EGG AGENCIES
- Altruistic rhetoric
- Women’s reproductive bodies are coded through cultural norms about motherhood
- Egg donation is a gift
SPERM BANKS
- Financial rhetoric
- Men’s bodies are coded through cultural norms associated with productivity, labour, and economic output
- Sperm donation is a job
