ABSTRACT
Introduction On February 22, 2011, 66-year-old Valentyna Pidverbna from Chernihiv, Ukraine, gave birth for the first time in her life. She immediately became famous in Ukraine as the oldest woman to become a mother. Her husband had divorced her because she was diagnosed as infertile. Nevertheless, she decided to undergo IVF treatment and earned the necessary money by selling goods on a market stall for seven years. She conceived a child during her third attempt at IVF using donor eggs and sperm at a fertility clinic in Kyiv. One month after the birth, medical professionals started to raise concerns that Valentyna was unable to independently take care of her child: she did not listen to their recommendations regarding healthy diet and daily routine, forbade them to examine the baby, did not buy diapers or baby formula, and in general demonstrated an “inadequate worldview.” They argued that the life of the newborn girl was in danger and requested her temporary removal from the mother to an orphanage on the basis of child neglect (Department of Healthcare of the Chernihiv Regional State Administration 2011). Despite the fact that this appeal was unsuccessful, the safety and wellbeing of Valentyna’s child remained a focus of media attention for the next four years. The news constantly reported the girl having serious health problems and Valentyna failing to provide her with good living conditions and medical care. The powerful position occupied by these media discourses demonstrates how Ukrainian society is pervaded by perceptions of “good” and “bad” mothering practices, according to which the only people who have the right to become parents are those who align with social norms of marital status, sexuality, reproductive age, and social class, and who comply with medical and social surveillance. The story of Valentyna shows that, despite the ways in which ARTs undermine discourses of the “naturalness” of human reproduction and heterosexual genetic parenthood (Franklin 1997, 10), their use still remains “embedded in a naturalized and normalized logic of kinship” (Franklin 2013, 4). By restricting who can have access to infertility treatments, those who police ARTs often help to achieve gender normalization and exercise control over “the physically or socially deviant, pathological, and dangerous” (Thompson 2005, 81).
