ABSTRACT
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) lives are often presented as ones of moral inferiority or, more progressively, as a seamless narrative of progress towards enhanced marital and familial rights. In addition to encounters with blatant homophobia and transphobia heteronormative assumptions about who should form families and how have significant impacts on the experiences of LGBTQ people who suffer reproductive loss. For many LGBTQ people and families reproductive loss encompasses far more than the loss of the child. Reproductive Losses makes queer losses visible and interrogates the cultural silences surrounding them in the context of LGBTQ people’s experiences. LGBTQ participants’ racial and ethnic identities, cultural background, socioeconomic class, ability, and age were important to them—and frequently affected the ways they were treated by others. Most research and autobiographical writing on LGBTQ family formation has focused on “successful” narratives, which contributes to minimizing the importance of reproductive challenges that LGBTQ people face.
