147

Feminism(s) and the politics

of reproduction
Introduction to Special Issue on
FT
Feminist Theory
‘Feminist Politics of Reproduction’ © The Author(s), 2009, Reprints and Permissions:
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
vol. 10(2): 147–152.
1464–7001
DOI: 10.1177/1464700109104921
http://fty.sagepub.com

Natalia Gerodetti Leeds Metropolitan University

Véronique Mottier Jesus College, Cambridge & University of Lausanne

Reproduction has constituted a central theme for second wave feminist

theory and practice, ranging from the politicization of issues such as
contraceptive access, abortion, and childcare, to mothering as a basis for
feminist ethics. In this context, practices such as abortion and contracep-
tion have primarily been considered as individual technologies, and their
access framed in terms of women’s individual rights. In more recent years,
the emergence of new reproductive technologies and genetic testing has
given rise to increasingly medicalized public debates questioning the scope
for individual choice, while older feminist gains, particularly in the areas
of abortion rights, have been the target of renewed attacks in many national
contexts. Yet, as 20th century history has shown, female sexuality and
reproductive choices have also been the object of more collective pre-
occupations and practices of population management, perhaps most
notoriously so in the context of eugenics (see, for example, Mottier and
Gerodetti, 2007). Overly individualistic approaches which frame access to
reproductive technologies in terms of the rights of individual women thus
run the risk of glossing over wider structural gender inequalities, as well
as the ways in which collective preoccupations and national politics are
played out in this domain.
The current special issue on feminism(s) and the politics of reproduc-
tion was prompted by our belief that recent developments in research and
public debates around new reproductive technologies signal the need for
renewed feminist attention to the politics of reproduction. In the early
years of second wave feminism, Shulamith Firestone’s Dialectic of Sex
(1970) famously suggested that the problematic linking of woman and
nature could be dissolved through artificial reproduction and contracep-
tion, and that technology would help liberate women from the constraints
of motherhood. Firestone’s optimism about the potential benefits of
technology was countered by sceptics such as Michelle Stanworth, who
expressed concern that those controlling reproductive technologies would
‘gain unprecedented control over motherhood itself’ (Stanworth, 1994:
232). In contrast, current feminist debates no longer centre primarily on
whether reproductive technology is intrinsically ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but rather
on the politics of pregnancy experiences (abortion and memorializing), on
148 Feminist Theory 10(2)

concomitant practices (sourcing, imaging, freezing, cloning), and on the

bodily materials involved (eggs, embryos or sperm). In vitro fertilization
(IVF), for instance, is nowadays frequently intertwined with other practices
such as egg donation, embryo donation, the storage of gametes and
embryos, or Prenatal Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). Against this backdrop,
professional discourses on fertility (and infertility) have generated a new
genre of techno-speak that is not always understandable to the uninitiated.
Individuals’ reproductive hopes and fears thus often appear peripheral
within public discussions on the ethical, medical or legal concerns regard-
ing ‘the material’, as has seemed the case in recent debates surrounding the
UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, for example.
The contributions to this special issue both engage with recent techno-
logical advances in the area of reproduction and their gendered effects, and
reflect some of the continuities with earlier feminist problematizations of
reproductive politics.
Helen Keane, in her article ‘Foetal personhood and representations of the
absent child in pregnancy loss memorialization’, points out that while
feminism has developed powerful critiques of the medicalization of
women’s reproductive bodies – women’s health movements have empha-
sized instead the naturalness of experiences of pregnancy and birthing –
an inadvertent consequence of this emphasis has been that experiences of
failed pregnancies constitute a blind spot within feminist theory. Against
this backdrop, Keane explores two major genres of representation of
miscarriage and stillbirth that currently circulate on the Internet and
provide spaces for public mourning and memorialization of pregnancy
loss: firstly, ‘dead angels’ websites, which originate primarily in the United
States and provide idealized visualizations of the miscarried foetuses as
‘dead angels’, often depicted with wings; and, secondly, the genre of
medical realism, including ultrasound imagery. The author examines how
both genres struggle with realism, and both fail and succeed in different
ways: on the one hand, both types of images ultimately fail to capture the
‘realness’ of pregnancy loss, despite attempts at representation which
include the digital manipulation of photographic images of ‘real’ deceased
newborns to add wings and other angel accessories, or presenting ultra-
sound imagery as ‘baby’s first portrait’; on the other hand, while both
genres allow for forms of memorialization, they also often reflect feelings
of loss and failure, signalling the limited range of current discourses on
pregnancy loss in an age of globalized access to the Internet. Keane builds
upon her analysis to develop a wider feminist theorization of notions of
personhood, the body and memorialization. Adopting an anthropologically
grounded social and relational model for understanding personhood which
contrasts with dominant ethnobiological models, Keane thus calls for the
opening up of alternative discursive spaces to articulate pregnancy loss
which do not involve adopting a discourse of rejection of the ‘personhood’
of the foetus (on the grounds of support for abortion rights) which ulti-
mately denies women’s subjective experiences of failed pregnancies.
‘Persons’, Keane argues, should be conceptualized as always ‘under
construction’, making it less necessary to make a clear distinction between
 Gerodetti & Mottier: Politics of reproduction 149

person and non-person. In this way, the ‘person’ of foetal loss remains
heterogeneous, and can be recuperated, mourned, represented as well as
theoretically analysed, without these processes necessarily turning into
prescriptive discourses.
The important role played by visual imagery in the context of reproduc-
tive experiences and controversies is further pursued by Julie Palmer in
her article ‘Seeing and knowing: Ultrasound images in the contemporary
abortion debate’. Whereas Keane was primarily concerned with the ways
in which foetal imagery is constructed on memorial websites, Palmer
explores instead the position of viewers of foetal imagery. Focusing on the
development of new three- and four-dimensional ultrasound images,
Palmer draws on concepts of citizenship, in particular the concept of the
citizen-voyeur, to conceptualize the ways in which such images have been
circulated and consumed in the context of renewed debates on abortion
term limits in the UK from 2004 to 2007. Examining the effects of the new
ultrasound images on policy makers, Palmer argues that the political
authority that such images exude derives from their conflation between
‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’: visualizing the foetus through medical realism,
Palmer argues, has played an important political role in the context of the
British parliamentary debates by suggesting to the citizen-voyeur that
‘seeing’ the ‘real’ baby in its various stages of development should lead to
revising the medical knowledge upon which time limits for legal abortion
had been previously based. While feminist scholarship has highlighted the
ways in which ‘conflicts of interests’ between women and foetuses are
played out in anti-abortion propaganda, Palmer invites us to critically
examine the ways in which the rights and duty to see/know were
strategically mobilized in recent debates around the implications of new
techniques of ultrasound imaging.
Similarly to Palmer’s article, Kate O’Riordan and Joan Haran’s ‘From
reproduction to research: Sourcing eggs, IVF and cloning in the UK’ also
focuses on recent policy-making debates on reproductive issues in the UK.
More precisely, the authors take a closer look at the ways in which
discourses on scientific innovation and on women’s rights were mobilized
in the context of the 2006 public consultation process regarding the issue
of donating eggs for research, and examine the ways in which women’s
interests were represented in this context. O’Riordan and Haran develop a
feminist critique of the subject positions which the consultation docu-
ments offered to women, pointing out that women’s decisions regarding
egg donation and IVF were represented in a discourse of individual
‘choice’ which obscured the structural conditions which may constrain
such choices. They argue that issues of embodiment and of the changing
intercorporeal relations which IVF and egg donation technologies establish
between female donors and the unknown future beneficiaries of their
donation were erased, and highlight a process of ‘technological creep’
between IVF and cloning, whereby the earlier technology of IVF was used
to foster cultural acceptance and willingness to donate for the purposes of
the newer cloning techniques. While the UK Human Fertilisation and
Embryo Authority (HFEA) is, internationally, often presented as an
150 Feminist Theory 10(2)

example of good governance, O’Riordan and Haran point out that consul-
tation and public participation were premised on the absence from discus-
sions of egg donation for cloning of the physical costs to female egg donors,
by presenting the practice as similar to egg sharing practices in the context
of IVF.
The final two contributions to this special issue explore discourses of
individual choice and rights in the context of abortion. In her article
‘Popular culture and reproductive politics: Juno, Knocked Up and the
enduring legacy of The Handmaid’s Tale’ Heather Latimer explores the
ways in which reproductive decision-making has been portrayed in recent
pop culture, with particular focus on Hollywood movies Juno and Knocked
Up whose storylines centre on their female protagonists unexpectedly
falling pregnant, and deciding against abortion. Latimer points out that
anti-abortion activists in Canada and the US have, in recent years, re-
oriented their campaigning to focus less on constitutional change and more
on a cultural battle to ‘change people’s hearts and minds’ about abortion,
and argues that popular culture is thus part of the battleground on which
reproductive politics is currently being fought. Such pop culture products
revive the notions of foetal personhood, ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ which
the anti-abortion movement had successfully imposed upon the pivotal
abortion debates of the 1980s, and which continue to structure current
discussions in this area. Against the backdrop of such continuities, Latimer
turns towards a classic novel from the 1980s, Margaret Atwood’s The
Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood’s satirical account of the imaginary ‘Republic of
Gilead’ offers a portrayal of what the future would look like in a funda-
mentalist state where women’s only reproductive ‘choice’ is between
pregnancy or death, where foetal personhood is sanctified, and reproduc-
tion governed by the state. While feminist critics have, in the past, been
divided over how feminist the novel is, Latimer argues that its negative
utopia acquires renewed political relevancy in the current cultural climate.
Shifting the focus from cultural politics to the legal politics of abortion,
Patrick Hanafin explores in his article ‘Refusing disembodiment: Abortion
and the paradox of reproductive rights in contemporary Italy’ the extent to
which profound cultural conflict on reproductive rights can be resolved by
law. Analysing political debates around the Italian Abortion Act both
before and since its implementation in 1978, the author argues that these
debates reflect feminist dilemmas regarding the legal regulation of individ-
ual choice. Indeed, prior to the Act, abortion was criminalized by the
fascist 1930s legislation which remained in operation, and had been part
of Mussolini’s eugenic aim – supported by the Catholic Church – to outlaw
‘Crimes against the Integrity and Health of the Stock’ such as voluntary
sterilization and contraception as well as abortion, in order to maintain the
‘vitality’ of the Italian nation. Mobilization against this legislation, Hanafin
explains, split the Italian feminist movement in the 1970s. On the one
hand, liberal feminists argued for a new law which would legalize
abortion; on the other hand, extra-parliamentary women’s groups called for
complete decriminalization without further legislation, on the grounds that
alternative legislation could, in the context of a patriarchal state, only ever
 Gerodetti & Mottier: Politics of reproduction 151

constitute a new form of biopolitical management of women’s reproduc-

tive bodies. Against this backdrop, Hanafin explores the thought of Italian
sexual difference theorists such as Adriana Cavarero and Lia Cigarini who
have, in recent years, continued to develop a powerful critique of rights-
based feminist strategies which provides an influential source of alterna-
tive political imagination. They call, instead, for a strategy of ‘legislative
voids’ regarding abortion which would create space ‘above the law’ where
women can make reproductive decisions outside of the legal limits placed
on current decisions by the state. Italian sexual difference theorists thus
attempt to ‘unthink’ the liberal political order by refusing to accept the
terms of patriarchal law, and thereby encourage feminist theorists to
rethink the reasons why legislative freedoms in the area of abortion and
reproductive rights more generally might, in themselves, not be enough to
guarantee full freedoms for women.
As is always the case with special issues, our selection of articles reflects
the range of submitted articles rather than a deliberate decision on our part
not to include articles focusing on non-Western contexts for example, to
name but one area which we would have wished to have been able to
integrate. Assisted conception, generally a concern for those wealthy
enough to be able to afford medical assistance, remains on a different end
of the spectrum to efforts by national and international organizations to
curtail the reproductive capacities of women in the Global South. Though
technology often attracts attention in relation to cutting edge processes or
implications, it is worth remembering that much of the field of reproduc-
tive technology continues to be played out with ‘old’ technologies.
Moreover, the ways in which reproductive technology is used are unpre-
dictable and need to be examined in particular local, national and interna-
tional contexts. What is certain is that it is not evenly accessible to all.
Future feminist politics of reproduction will therefore increasingly need to
address transnational issues, such as reproductive tourism. Similarly, our
selection of articles implicitly equates ‘gender’ with ‘women’, despite the
fact that the silence on men and masculinities in much of the public
debates on reproduction is, in itself, of feminist interest. As we are
completing this introduction thirty years after the birth of the first test tube
baby in Manchester (UK) in 1978, media debates are still raging over
another first, that is, the first birth by a transman;1 signalling, perhaps, the
need for future feminist theory to develop in-depth analyses of the
transgender politics of reproduction.

Note
1. Thomas Beatie, a US FtM transman who kept his reproductive organs
when undergoing sex change surgery, gave birth to a daughter in June 2008
and is expected to give birth to a second child in June 2009. Living in the
US state of Oregon, he is married to his long-term partner Nancy. When
they decided to make news of the first birth public in spring 2008, the story
caused considerable media attention.
152 Feminist Theory 10(2)

References
Firestone, Shulamith (1970) The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist
Revolution. New York: Morrow.
Mottier, Véronique and Natalia Gerodetti (2007) ‘Eugenics and
Social-Democracy: Or, How the European Left Tried to Eliminate the
“Weeds” from its National Gardens’, New Formations 20: 35–49.
Stanworth, Michelle (1994) ‘Reproductive Technologies and the
Deconstruction of Motherhood’, pp. 226–34 in The Polity Reader in Gender
Studies. Cambridge: Polity.
Natalia Gerodetti is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Leeds Metropolitan
University. Her main publications include Modernising Sexualities: Towards a
Socio-Historical Understanding of Sexualities in the Swiss Nation (Peter Lang,
2005), the co-edited Bound and Unbound: Interdisciplinary Approaches to
Genders and Sexualities (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008) as well as
numerous articles on eugenics, gender, and sexuality, female migration and
sexual agency.
Address: School of Social Sciences, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds
LS1 3HE, UK. Email: n.gerodetti@leedsmet.ac.uk
Véronique Mottier is Fellow and Director of Studies in Social and Political
Sciences at Jesus College, Cambridge, as well as Professor of Sociology at the
University of Lausanne. Her main publications include Sexuality: A Very
Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2008), and the co-edited Pflege,
Stigmatisierung und Eugenik (Seismo, 2007), Genre et politique (Gallimard,
2000), and Politics of Sexuality (Routledge, 1999).
Address: Jesus College, Cambridge CB5 8BL, UK. Email:
vm10004@hermes.cam.ac.uk