Manufacturing Babies and Public Consent: Debating the New Reproductive Technologies

On Christmas day, 1993, a 59-year-old British woman gave birth to healthy twins. In Italy the very same week, a black woman bore a white baby, produced from the semen of her white husband and an egg donated by a white woman. Heated debates ensued across the United States and Europe.

Fifteen years ago the very idea of conception outside a woman’s womb triggered science fiction fantasies and alarmist speculations. Today, thousands of babies are manufactured with the help of in-vitro fertilization and related technologies each year. The application of these procedures has continuously shifted the boundaries of conception and reproduction.

In the public debate on new reproductive technologies, many voices have been heard: medical scientists hailing the new technologies as an unprecedented advance; feminists raising apprehensions about the way in which these technologies might rob a woman of her reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity; and ethicists, religious groups, and politicians expressing concerns about the social and moral implications of the new technologies. Mapping out the public debate in the three discourses which play the most significant role in the distribution of public meanings–science, journalism and fiction–Jos Van Dyck here traces the ways in which this public consent has been manufactured. This book examines important questions about the relationship between science, technology and popular culture.