Treatments for Men and Children

Abstract

Crucial to the analysis of reproductive technologies is the recognition that these practices do not only involve the blending of nature and technology, but also that they constitute discourses on the production of individuality.²⁰² This is one of the reasons why “reproductive politics” has been and still is central to women’s emancipatory struggles. Pregnancy is about the making of new individuals, about processes of individuation, about two bodies becoming one, one body becoming two.²⁰³ Individuality, however, whether understood psychologically, morally, legally, or even biologically, is not a pregiven ontological category, but always a contingent achievement.²⁰⁴ At the same time, it is fundamental to most of our notions that invoke normative issues in medicine, such as patient autonomy and bodily integrity; it underlies patient rights and informed consent procedures in medicine. With respect to bodily self determination, for example, it is obviously required that it be clear what counts as self, and what as other, where the boundaries of the individual body are drawn. In contemporary reproductive technologies, however, it is precisely these boundaries that are at stake and being redefined.