TY - JOUR
AU1 - Adrian, Stine Willum
AB - Denmark has become a destination for fertility travelers in need of sperm. Through a careful ethnographic reading of how fertility travelers account for their journey to Denmark and their selection of sperm donors, I explore what comprises donor selection and ask: How can we understand accountability for inclusion and exclusion in the phenomena of donor selection that emerges when women and couples travel to Denmark for sperm? While the recently coined term ‘selective reproductive technology’ (Gammeltoft and Wahlberg in Annu Rev Anthropol 43:201–216, 2014) creates a framework for productive discussions on reproductive selection, this paper points out that the ontological premises of the notion of selection have political consequences and thus demand careful methodological examination. Based on ethnographic work on sperm selection in fertility travels to Denmark, this paper contributes a reconceptualization of the notion of the phenomena of selection. This reconceptualization reflects on and disrupts the ways in which inclusion and exclusion take place as selection emerges through both material and discursive elements, particularly national regulations, perceptions of race, the freezing ability of sperm, and the financial situations of those seeking treatment. To encompass such varying elements, the concept is analyzed by drawing on a relational ontology informed by the notion of the phenomenon, the basic analytical unit in agential realism (Barad in Meeting the universe halfway. Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2007). This chosen reconceptualization may grant us the imaginative space to consider how the process of selection might be otherwise conducted.
TI - Rethinking reproductive selection: traveling transnationally for sperm
JF - BioSocieties
DO - 10.1057/s41292-019-00159-3
DA - 2020-12-03
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/rethinking-reproductive-selection-traveling-transnationally-for-sperm-tmUiCv0C3N
SP - 532
EP - 554
VL - 15
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -