Nobody's Child, Everybody's Children:
The Next Generation: The Politics of New Reproductive Technologies in Contemporary France: Implications for Women’s Rights
This conference paper is part of a broader comparative and interdisciplinary study of national laws and public policies governing new reproductive and genetic technologies (NRGTs) in North America and Western Europe. My goal is to analyze and evaluate the interplay between reproductive technologies and reproductive rights. Since the 1970s, with the advent of NRGTs, including in-vitro fertilization, genetic selection, surrogate motherhood, and cloning, public debates about reproductive rights have intensified, sparking a number of legal actions by states as well as international organizations to regulate the rapid advancement of NRGT research and treatments.
This study examines French national laws and policies governing NRGTs since 1975, when the French state decriminalized abortion to incorporate liberal feminist demands for reproductive freedom into its reproductive politics. France presents a unique case study for investigating the politics of reproductive technologies, as the French state has historically connected “pronatalism,” or the promotion of childbearing, with other geopolitical policies to increase population size. At the same time, due to the postwar feminist movement’s success, women’s reproductive rights, including reproductive technologies, enjoy great support in French society.
To this end, the study investigates three recent reproductive “events,” which highlight the impact of scientific advances on society and policy-making. These include
The 2001 French Supreme Court ruling of the “right to death” of an unborn fetus, raising questions about where governmental responsibility, or fetal rights, begin or end.
The birth of “twins” eight days apart in 2001 to a 62-year old French woman and her brother through the use of in-vitro fertilization for the one, and an American surrogate mother for the other baby, raising questions in the age of global NRGT services about enforcing national laws pertaining to maternity and paternity rights; the legal status of eggs, sperm, and fertilized eggs; and the commercialization of women’s bodies.
The 2006 recommendation to Prime Minister Villepin to legalize therapeutic cloning by 2009, which is still illegal in France, raising questions about the commercialization of fetal tissue, the dangers of reprogenetics, and the possible implications for reproductive cloning.
The method employed to capture the complexity of this enquiry is documentary analysis of both formal documentation produced by governmental decision- and policy-makers (including the Journal Officiel, governmental decrees, and policy papers by the Ministries of Health and Family, as well as Supreme Court decisions). The paper also draws upon feminist writings about reproductive technologies produced by the next generation of feminists after the historic abortion law in 1975 (including Marie-Josèphe Dhavernas, Evelyne Sullerot, Odette Thibault, Rosi Braidotti, and others). By focusing upon the French case, the resulting analysis will show that unique historical, institutional, and cultural factors, including feminist discourse, affect and shape national policies governing the uses of NRGTs.