Abstract
Reproduction is a complex and ill-defined term. It has been variously described as an aspect of sexuality, motherhood, health, population, the family, work, and the restoration of labour power. This variety of definitions indicates a lack of precision and clarity. Reproduction has come to mean widely different things in demography, economics, medicine, psychology, anthropology, sociology, not to mention Marxism and feminism. Academic writings on the subject are simultaneously overlapping and fragmented along disciplinary lines, and there is also a problem in the way they are simplified for popular consumptiom. Thus there is no single agreed ‘reproductive paradigm’, although there is an emerging consensus among feminist academics on how not to do research on reproduction.’ The fancy academic terminology also tends to ignore the simple fact that, in the minds of most people, reproduction refers to procreation and having children.
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NOTES
For examples of recent feminist analyses of reproduction in the biological sense, see Gordon (1976), Bland et al. (1978), Chodorow (1978), Oakley (1979a and 1980), Moen (1979), Petchesky Pollack (1980), O’Brien (1981), Morokvasi6 (1981) and Woodhouse (1982).
In recent years, artificial reproduction (e.g. the freeze-storing of ova, sperm and embryo, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer), has become a widely discussed, controversial topic and the subject of considerable feminist criticism. For a critical feminist literature on the issue, see Rose and Hanmer (1976), Hanmer and Allen (1980), Hanmer (1981), Holmes et al. (1981), Rothman (1982, pp. 113–30), Arditti et al. (1984) and Greer (1984); for a conventional sociological treatment of the subject, see Snowden and Mitchell (1981) and Snowden, Mitchell and Snowden (1983). Manipulative reproductive technologies are gradually finding their way also into Eastern Europe. Artificial insemination by donor has been used in Czechoslovakia for some time and there is interest in the more recent techniques as well. According to Zavadska (1983), there are 500–600 requests for artificial insemination by donor (AID) or by husband (AIH) annually. In 1983, a new law regulating AID was passed, thus ending several years of what Stépán (1984, p. 175) calls ‘legal insecurity on the issue’. The state research plan on human reproduction has also given full support to the clinical usage of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), to the extent that Czechoslovakia became the first COMECON (Council of Mutual Economic Cooperation) country where an IVF baby had been born (on 4 November 1982). Three subsequent IVF births occurred in 1984 (Krestan, 1985). However, there seems to be considerable opposition to embryo transfer and to surrogate motherhood in general on the grounds of both the uncertain legal status of the foetus and the potential danger of ‘mercen-ary pay’ for babies.
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© 1987 Alena Heitlinger
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Heitlinger, A. (1987). Introduction. In: Reproduction, Medicine and the Socialist State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07162-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07162-3_1
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