Reproductive Technologies in Cross Cultural Perspective

I found this week's readings particularly compelling. I was interested with the extensive insights given by the various authors in response to new developments in reproductive technologies, whether assistive or selective. A point from one of our readings that I believe applies to this week's theme as a whole is one that Inhorn posits in her discussion of IVF and gamete donation in the context of Sunni vs. Shi'a Islam, the idea of the "global in the local." This is the idea that local (in our nexus of study this can refer to nations, societies, families, or other socio-ecological units) circumstances and considerations inform how people react to the introduction of modern Western biotechnologies. She goes on to say that these innovations were not introduced within a cultural void, and this point appears transcendent in our topic of study. As Gammeltoft and Wahlberg state, structures such as religion, kinship relations, normative gender roles, as well as political history, play enormous roles in how the uptake of biotechnology - and not just selective reproductive technologies (SRTs) occur in various contexts. What what might be viewed as a viable, beneficial option in one case might be unacceptable and reprehensible in another, as the same authors state when contrasting the appeal of of selective technologies to Germany and Israel, invoking past Nazi eugenic contexts and Zionist ideals of a "chosen" body and people. In other cases, such as China, these same technologies have been readily included into a milieu of medicalized pregnancy, particularly in a context that places societal pressure on women to bear a male child.

I was struck with how the development of SRTs was met with various struggles in the context of religion. In the case of Kahn, selective technologies gave rise to conflicts among parents about the maternity of their prospective children as it applied to Halakhic (Jewish holy) law, since those same laws held that the maternal status was dependent on who gestated the child and gave birth. In the Inhorn case, struggles over interpretations of Islamic fatwas were omnipresent in the acceptability of selective biotechnologies by Sunni and Shi'a Islam and the application of practices of temporary marriage. Some struggles were largely based around the idea that gamete donation would result in the creation of incest in the future, illegitimate children or even violations of marriage, since engaging with the sex cells of another would constitute a form of adultery. Other struggles were instead based in how stringently the rules of traditional Shi'a Islam needed to be followed, in light of increasingly liberal practices. Quite impressive was the fact that a large number of those who do not regularly engage as adherents of Islam still held to practices which according to Islamic law are not legal, so ingrained are the practices perpetuated by the religious majority.

I will be interested to see the role that biotechnology, particularly those aspects that interact with health and medical practices, continue to engage with very grounded societal practices and value in an increasingly modernized world. What do these new technologies and practices have in store for traditions which form the cultural backbone of numerous societies? More progressive rabbis have concluded that we should perhaps have a more dualistic idea of maternity grounded not only in gestation but also genetics; in this case we speak of maternity, but how will we reconcile our existing paradigms when their very definitional framework is being altered by advancing forces often outside our control?