ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how technological means to assist reproduction appear to increase women’s choice but exert control over women’s lives. Women are treated as mere body parts — wombs, cells, eggs and makers of embryos. Motherhood too is split into genetic, birth or social mothers. Much experimentation of women’s fertility, contraception and sterilization occurs in developing countries and the nature of ethnic and racist exploitation is discussed. The chapter distinguishes between:
involuntary childlessness
voluntary childfreeness
infertility.
The chapter critically examines:the importancein vitrofertilization (IVF) places on genetic ownership and biological birth
the dehumanization and suffering of undergoing IVF treatment that does not lead to the birth of a healthy baby
who is suitable for IVF treatment.
The chapter looks briefly at genetic engineering, sex selection and controversies surrounding who owns stored genetic material. The commodification of reproduction is criticized, particularly in commercial contract motherhood, because it reduces a woman to a uterus whose sole purpose is to produce a baby to relinquish. The pregnant woman’s personhood is not given moral significance.