Abstract
The Discursive Landscape explores how assisted reproduction was presented in the media and in other discursive spaces (e.g. trade shows, public spaces, and patient information sessions). The guiding questions are: As assisted reproduction presented as offering an advantage over adoption? Was it depicted as too complex to use? Were its outcomes made observable? Did it articulate with established cultural values and gender roles? The chapter concludes that, in the discursive landscape analysed, assisted reproduction is constructed as a highly successful solution to infertility, as an acceptable way to perform motherhood, and as a series of technologies that are capable of imitating nature while also going beyond it and solving problems nature cannot. These framings help make assisted reproduction a usable commodity.
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Notes
- 1.
There are a few scholars whose work dialogues with what is presented here in terms of how people make sense of the different situations and actors that emerge as a result of assisted reproduction, for example Elizabeth Robert’s work on Ecuador (2006, 2007, 2016), Melissa Shaw’s work on negotiating medicalisation in Colombia (2016), and Mariana Viera Cherro’s (2012, 2015) work on how ARTs are viewed and negotiated by clinicians and patients in Argentina.
- 2.
Data was collected from a ten year span (1999/2000 to 2010).
- 3.
By this, I mean that most were self-identified as women both in their textual interaction and in the name they used.
- 4.
Ferring is a pharmaceutical company that began operations in Mexico in 1996 and since has had great local grown. http://esperandote.net/fertilidad/bb-en-casa/.
- 5.
Events similar to this one have taken place in other countries, for example the National Infertility Day in the UK, the Fertility Expo, and the New Beginnings fertility conference in the USA. Some of these events are for free and organised in conjunction with support groups while others are done with the support of clinics. However, the organiser of Expo Fertilidad claims this as the first event of the sort to be held in Mexico and in the rest of Latin America. If other health-related patient led conferences take place in Mexico, they never receive the same amount of media coverage nor are announced in so many public spaces as this one.
- 6.
During an interview, she told me the story of how she came up with the idea of Expo Fertilidad: she had been working at a parent’s magazine (called Padres e Hijos), when she was asked to organise a sweepstake, as a way to promote an infertility clinic. The sweepstake was called “You haven’t been able to be a mother? We make your dream come true” (Padres e Hijos, 2005 XXVI [12]: 58). The idea was that people would send in letters telling their infertility story accompanied by their medical diagnosis. The case with the best possibility of achieving success would be offered a free AR cycle at the participating clinic. “We received about 1000 letters. For other contests, for example, having your baby’s face on the front cover of the magazine, I would receive about 3000; so you can see the proportion […] my readers were supposed to be parents already; probably some were just aspiring to be parents and others knew people who were trying to become parents”. The unexpected number of letters received as well as their content made her acknowledges that infertility and assisted reproduction were becoming important topics for which people had little information. The high response and the clear need for information gave her the idea of a trade show where patients/consumers could meet clinics/service providers.
- 7.
The Metrobus is a confined bus system that has served Mexico City since mid-2006. In 2017, estimates said that with its six lines, it moved an average of 1.3 million users daily.
- 8.
In conjunction, these newspapers cover the political spectrum as much as possible: one has the largest circulation in the country and actively attempts to follow a non-partisan editorial line (El Universal), another represents a right of centre perspective (El Reforma), and the third one a left of centre (La Jornada). I used their online databases and search engine using the terms infertility, fertility, sterility, assisted reproduction, and surrogacy and chose the pieces that dealt with human reproduction. In all these cases, I specifically focused on the process of naming, socialising, and establishing of infertility and assisted reproduction. Six themes were found to be recurrent in most discourses, so they were selected as elements to guide the overall analysis: (1) definition , incidence, and causes of infertility; (2) definition , success rates, and side effects of the procedures; (3) criteria for clinic, doctor, and patient eligibility; (4) sources of information; (5) the interaction between gender roles, infertility, and assisted reproduction; and (6) ethical issues. In addition to these themes, I also analysed the discourse strategy employed (use of reference to experts, testimonies, statistics, numbers) and the tone in which articles were written (whether they were presenting great concern, concern, were neutral, or were promising). It is important to clarify that the vast majority of the newspaper and magazine articles are written by journalists who were not specialised in the field of health, medicine, or science communication; hence, it is not uncommon to find errors, for example in the names of procedures (e.g. instead of ICSI, they say IXI).
- 9.
Salud y Bienestar, 2005; Mari-Claire, 2006; BbMundo, 2006; Deep, 2006; Visión Universitaria, 2006; ABC, 2006; Nexos, 2006; Fernanda, 2006.
- 10.
Diálogos en Confianza, channel 11, 2003; n Vitro, channel 11, 2007.
- 11.
Los Abogados, MVS Radio, 2008.
- 12.
It is important to underline that these articles were not always only about private clinics. There were also articles talking about the AR programmes offered at public clinics like INPer and ISSSTE.
- 13.
This is similar to what Aditya Bharadwaj talks about (2000) when he analysed the “narrativisation of infertility” in the Indian mass media. In his paper, he showed how the media combines “scientific and journalistic styles to create an institutional advertisement which makes the subject–conquering infertility–appear magnificent and yet attainable” (p. 70).
- 14.
Shirley Shalev and Dafna Lemish (2012) explored the way Israeli’s Hebrew press depicted (in)fertility and ARTs between 1995 and 2003. Their analysis concluded that the press framed childbearing as the most valued and sacred contribution women could make to the national collective. It presented motherhood as a glorified public role, prioritised above and beyond personal ambition, needs, and other life goals and as an essential condition for social and familial acceptance. It established a clear preference for the genetic link between parents and their children. And it depicted ARTs both as a source of Israeli pride, due to its techno-scientific component, and as an accepted method to become a mother. The sum of these narratives resulted in a particular way of framing women who use ARTs when facing infertility. They were commonly framed as altruistic individuals willing to accept any physical, emotional, or economic cost in order to bring a child into the world. Although the Mexican press also favoured the genetic tie, also framed motherhood as women’s highest and most noble purpose in life, and also presented ARTs as an acceptable means to achieve biological motherhood, the countries’ particular political and social contexts result in different policies and reasons behind why these framings are thus. Israel’s history (shaped by, among other things, the Holocaust, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the demographic threat, and the worldview of Judaism) has brewed an important cultural pressure to produce Jewish children in order to guarantee the survival of the Jewish people. This has resulted in a fertility policy which actively promotes reproduction offering women free and unlimited access to fertility treatments in order to achieve the normative family size of four: a couple with at least two children. Mexico, on the other hand, still carries the population bomb discourse on its shoulders; thus, it does not promote childbearing in this way. Although both the public and the work-related health systems offer assisted reproduction, they justify the expense with two combined reasonings: these services are part of the training they offer med students, and they are caring for people’s needs.
Maher (2014) offers an interesting analysis of how, in some movies, the heteronormative and genetic-centred reproduction script is upheld through assisted reproduction. She looks at three romantic comedies with female leading roles: Baby Mama (2008), The Switch (2008), and The Back-up Plan (2010). The main argument she found in these films praised women’s economic and reproductive independence while at the same time re-enforcing the idea that women, all women, eventually feel the tug of the clichéd “biological clock”. Situated within the consumer culture of the USA, where “choice” is presented as a given, all three leading characters resort to ARTs to achieve newly awoken desire to become a mother, all three achieve pregnancy in their first attempt, and all three end up married with the man they love, who also happens to be the biological father of their child.
Brooke Weihe Edge (2014) and Heather Osborne-Thompson (2014) analysed the unintentional use of serial reality television as a way of introducing infertility and IVF into the public conversation. They highlight how these TV shows articulates melodrama and “can-do-ism”, suggesting that the solution to the problem of infertility is the use of all available technologies for as long as it takes.
- 15.
The telenovelas produced by Miguel Sabido were Ven Conmigo (1976), Acompáñame (1977), Vamos Juntos (1979), Caminemos (1980). See Chapter 3: Managing Reproduction for more on this.
- 16.
By this time, Televisa was in a franc competition with TV Azteca for telenovela audience. However, whereas Televisa claimed to be the dream factory “la fábrica de sueños”, Azteca—together with Argos Productions—aspired to a more intellectual audience saying they produced telenovelas that “made you think” (Lewkowicz, 2015).
- 17.
Soap operas and drama series (telenovelas) included assisted reproduction in their plot line.
- 18.
The Virgin of Guadalupe is the Mexican version of the Virgin Mary; hence, “marianismo” is the theoretical concept that encompasses the ideal stereotype of the Mexican woman, and it is derived from the Virgin Guadalupe-Mary.
- 19.
All the interactions I read on this and other forums, as well as the interviews I held with patients at clinics and information sessions, were all “in real time”. This means they were, at the moment of my encounter with them, undergoing a cycle. Recently, I have interviewed former users, and the way they speak of this pilgrimage is different. Further research on the difference between these narratives would be interesting.
- 20.
AMIs sound similar to the word for friends in Spanish “amigas” and particularly to an endearing slang “amiguis”. With this term, they position themselves at a fraternal level.
- 21.
However, one of the few studies that looks at the attitude of Mexican men towards infertility and assisted reproduction stated that most of the male partners of women seeking AR treatment at that particular public institution were submissive, passive, and had not a strong desire to become fathers, but that they tolerated and collaborated with their wives during treatment (Arranz-Lara, 2001).
- 22.
“Everyone at AMI knows my situation and all the treatments that I have gone through…at the beginning I said NO TO ADOPTION…after six years of trying every treatment: IVF, sperm donations, embryo donation, herbal teas from the Juarez Market…we have considered renting a womb in the USA…you can’t imagine what I would give to have a baby in my arms, to carry it, to kiss it. It doesn’t matter if it is born out of me, if it has the sperm and ova of another couple, if the sperm is from a donor…come as it may, but I want to have a BABY IN MY ARMS and not necessarily in my womb…I think that MOTHER IS WHO RAISES YOU, WHO EDUCATES YOU, WHO LOVES YOU…and not necessarily who carries you in her womb…surrogate mothers are women who simply are the oven in which the cake is baked and you pay them to have them grow your baby in their womb…so by whichever method, the objective we all have is TO HAVE A BABY IN OUR ARMS TO KISS, TAKE CARE OF AND TO HAVE HIM UTTER THE WORD MOM. WHICHEVER PATH YOUR BABY TAKES TO ARRIVE IS NOT BETTER NOR WORST…OVA DONATION, SPERM DONATION, EMBRYO DONATION, INSEMINATION, IN VITRO, ADOPTION, SURROGATE…ETC…and yes, it will not have your eyes, but it will have your gaze” (Forum post, emphasis in the original).
- 23.
See, for example, Aguilar, El Universal, 2000; Pérez Stadelman, El Universal, 2001. For a full list of articles, see González-Santos (2011).
- 24.
This is one of the central questions within the field of AR studies. For a group of researchers concerned with this, see, for example, the group Changing (In)Fertilities (Reprosoc Cambridge) and AFIN (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona).
- 25.
While the Black Friday was thought of as a strategy to get rid of the last season’s goods and make way for the new ones that will be feeding the consumers for Christmas, the Buen Fin is simply a way to boost consumption. It is a annual nationwide shopping weekend scheme implemented since 2011 to encourage people to spend money by offering special promotions (e.g. extended credit terms, points schemes, and store credit). It takes place during the weekend of the Mexican Revolution holiday (20 November). Critics say this only encourages unnecessary consumption leading to debts since buyers tend to pay with credit cards in monthly interest-free regular payments. It conjoins the interests of the Mexican Banks association, the Mexican Internet association, the Commerce and Tourism Chamber (CONCANACO), the Industry Chambers (CONACAMIN), and the Mexican government.
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González-Santos, S.P. (2020). The Discursive Landscape. In: A Portrait of Assisted Reproduction in Mexico. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23041-8_6
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