ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates a third moment of world historically significant change in reproductive process as evident in the distinctions between the mass contraceptive technology of Mary O'Brien's era and the conceptive and other new reproductive technology (NRT) of mine. NRT is a new moment because it alters, once again, the material experience of reproductive process by estranging the reproducer from nature because it involves disembodiment of reproductive process. The social relations of reproduction that can mediate the newest forms of alienation engendered in NRTs have not yet emerged, although one response is clear in many women's and feminists' flight from the body. Michelle Stanworth, by drawing attention to who is the subject and who the object in NRT literature, argues that women's reproductive agency is being dismantled by being decentred. In a new US study spanning four decades and 44 states, authors Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin found widespread denial of pregnant women's civil and political rights.
