ABSTRACT
"Reprotech," the language of the new reproductive technologies, helps to construct a context for reproductive technology that both softens its reality and redefines women as fragmented body parts and children as products. In vitro fertilization (IVF) for the first time allows the human embryo to be available for ex utero manipulation and research. In an astonishing development in new reproductive technology research in the late 1980s a "back-to-nature" trend emerged. Women are natural resources "harvested" for eggs and become restricted in the scientific literature to eggs, ovaries, and wombs. IVF researchers often refer to women as "endocrinological environments." In an advertisement by Hewlett-Packard in 1988, a new "fetal trace transmission system" was featured. With this system, heartbeat traces can be communicated and recorded over standard telephone lines linking women in their homes with hospitals and doctors' offices, avoiding the necessity of practitioners speaking with, touching, or seeing the woman at all.
