Radical Narratives of Assisted Reproduction

Reproduction is frequently siloed within the sciences. Studying its complexity and its narratives inherently requires an interdisciplinary approach, due to its major biological, social, political, legal, and ethical connections. This book responds by offering a broad and inclusive framework for understanding assisted reproduction, providing a collection to unpack and reframe the narratives that describe and shape how patients, practitioners, and the public engage with and understand recent innovations in assisted reproduction. The collection brings together contributors from law, policy, social sciences, arts, and clinical practice to interrogate reproductive issues through cultural, historical, political, legal, and ethical debate. The concept of “narrative” serves as a unifying thread—encompassing personal testimony, policy discourse, legal argument, literary representation, and media framing—to reveal how assisted reproduction is shaped, contested, and lived. The collection’s scope is distinguished by its thematic and disciplinary diversity: from bioethical debates on gamete adoption, to the politics of LGBTQ+ family formation, to feminist critiques of reproductive freedom, and the social imaginaries that influence public trust in science. It also addresses the epistemological limitations of traditional frameworks, offering instead a multi-layered approach that connects micro-level experiences (patients, families, communities) with macro-level forces (policy, regulation, cultural norms). Through this multi-layered approach, Radical Narratives of Assisted Reproduction crosses social, political and clinical domains to offer scholars the opportunity to explore storytelling strategies, personal experience, and public discourse on new forms of technologically mediated reproduction. The collection’s radical approach emerges from its use of academic writing to advance social justice efforts in policy and practice and to interrogate traditional beliefs from perspectives not usually taken into consideration. In this way, the edited collection includes contributions from a broad range of disciplines, without any restriction of “narrative” to a specific understanding. In essence, it is the diversity of narratives and how contributors use this term to interrogate traditional understandings of “assisted reproduction” that lie at the heart of this edited collection. Chapter 2 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.