ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which rights claims and subject positions related to reproduction are discursively constructed in the debates on reproductive technologies in contemporary Poland. It discusses theoretical debates on citizenship as embodied experience shaped by biomedical progress, drawing on discourses and practices emerging in the postsocialist context. The chapter examines the Polish discussion on infertility and in vitro fertilization (IVF), mapping the dynamics of reproductive citizenship within a conservative social environment characterized by a strong opposition to women’s reproductive rights and new biomedical technologies in the sphere of reproduction. It explores the limitations of the concept of biological citizenship when employed in the context of reproductive technologies. The politics of reproduction has always been one of the central issues for feminists, who have explored the nexus of reproduction and citizenship in different sociopolitical contexts. The tendency to construct a specific category of IVF children and discriminate against this group appears specific to Poland.
