Technicization of “Birth” and “Mothering”: Bioethical Debates from Feminist Perspectives

Abstract

Birthing is a natural phenomenon. However, in the era of modernisation, it has dramatically changed and transformed into a technological affair. Some feminists claim that advances in medicine and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have opened up numerous opportunities and choices for women to free themselves from their destined role of maternity by separating sex from reproduction. But are these technological artefacts always there to emancipate women or just another way to keep them subordinated to serve social needs? Other feminists argue that technology is a controlling tool. It eliminates a woman’s choice and uses her body as a baby-manufacturing machine to perpetuate pervasive social roles and responsibilities. Again, if technology is simply a patriarchal trap, then can technological exclusion be the key to all reproductive issues? It seems not! Technology is the inevitable new reality of the world influenced by socio-cultural practices, values, norms and belief system that has a strong impact on human existence. The present paper is an attempt to critically explore and evaluate the ethical challenges posed by technicization of motherhood from two opposite feminist perspectives. I argue that these ART-centred debates are significant but polarised and insufficient to resolve maternal problems. Thus, we need an egalitarian model of technology that saves women from the threat of technicization, and be able to provide a dignified use of it. The paper discusses the impact of technicization on maternal self in relation to ARTs and proposes suggestions to overcome this problem.

Introduction

“The social structure creates needs—the needs for women to be mother,... the needs for ‘perfect’ children—and creates the technology which enables people to make the needed choices” says Barbara Katz Rothman (1984, 32); and it may be justified in employing this aphorism when we begin to venture on a similar task, i.e. to comprehend the meaning of motherhood and technology. Although procreation is a natural act, in the present age, it has become the subject of technological authority. Women have faced reproductive problems in various ways in different times and across cultures in terms of involuntary infertility, unwanted fertility, and remain childfree, and have sought means to overcome these bodily limitations and problems. They secretly used the services of midwives or traditional women healers for obtaining help for successful conception and contraception, performing abortion and getting concoctions to ease labour pain during childbirth. However, after the new technological developments of gynaecology and obstetrics in the fields of conception, contraception and abortion, it has become possible for women to enhance their reproductive freedom and choices to control their body. Jyotsna A. Gupta (2000, 13) puts technological possibilities in these words:

With the development of contraceptive technologies it became possible to have sex without reproduction [and] later, with the development of [conceptive] technologies such as artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilisation, it became possible to have reproduction without sex.

This technical way of reproduction defines all socially constructed human reproductions that take place without sexual intercourse with the help of modern reproductive technologies which is a revolutionary step in human history. New reproductive technologies assist human reproduction in three basic categories as described by Jyotsna A. Gupta that are for the prevention of conception and birth that includes termination methods and contraceptives; for assisting reproduction in the form of aiding or stimulating conception; and for genetic purpose and for prenatal diagnosis that incorporates sex detection and sex pre-selection. It is claimed that the basic aim of these technologies is to improve reproductive health of the expectant mother, and promote the procreation of babies without any genetic disorders, free from hereditary diseases (Gupta 2000). These claims go to the extent of the possibility of planning of “perfect baby” or “designer’s baby”. Renate Klein elucidates new reproductive technologies “as the full range of biomedical/technical interferences during the process of procreation, whether aimed at producing a child or preventing/terminating pregnancy” (Spallone and Steinberg 1987, 15). In this manner, technology has blurred the line between biological and artificial reproduction, or to the extent, biology is becoming more technological that can be seen as a new definition of normal/natural livelihood. Sara Franklin (2013) terms it technicization of a biological process that shows how the reproductive process that is understood as biological is essentially mechanised and seen as a normal fact of women’s lives today. Franklin (2013, 1) states that:

The moment of conception can be viewed on the Internet; it is depicted in films and advertisements, and shown on the evening news. It can be downloaded in 3D from YouTube. This technologization of reproduction is both ordinary and curious. These images reflect the desire to know and understand that is conveyed in the normal meaning of “curious,” but it is equally curious in the sense of surprising and unusual, that such images are ordinary at all.

These technological interventions in a biological process look like ordinary and promising devices to manipulate and remake human life. But the important question to be considered here is, who is the regulating and controlling authority? Technology is a practical implication of socially constructed ideas. Then, is a woman free to exercise her technologically driven choices in a hierarchical male-centred society, or are her choices as situated as she is? To find answers to these questions, we need to unravel the structures of society and the way women are placed in it. Feminists who reject assisted reproductive technology (ARTs) argue that in patriarchy, a woman is defined through the lenses of a man in which his desire and interpretation of the desire is more valuable than her own, which has a strong impact on her choices, actions and decision-making that it cannot be ignored. They claim that men invented technology to fulfil his desires and successfully persuaded women to consider it emancipatory tool. Despite the above arguments, it is evident that reproductive technologies are becoming an integral part of human life today. The burgeoning popularity of these technologies and their optimistic image in women’s lives can also be understood by increasing rate of fertility clinics in rural and urban cities across the globe. Nowadays women hardly prefer to give birth and deliver their children at home and avoid consulting with traditional midwives as they rely on technological hope and think that male techno-doctors are more knowledgeable and they know their body better than them. Contrarily, various research and survey reports have shown the high failure rate of technological procedures in birthing that raise doubt against women’s technological perception and their real-life experience that has taken into account. It is a known fact that due to their choice fulfilling potential, ARTs rapidly emerged as a commercialised birth industry and women remain one of the units of this industry; nevertheless, women desire to experience it.

All these contradictory aspects of reproductive technology make it a complex phenomenon for feminists to reflect upon. It is crucial to discuss that whether these reproductive technologies are really assisting and choice-providing tools for women or not? Feminists have two distinct views to respond to this question. The feminists who accept ARTs as emancipatory tools are known as accepting feminists. They claim that ARTs have not only paved a way to enhance procreative choices but also have the potential of enabling women to take control over their bodies and reproductive selves. However, the other group of feminists who oppose ARTs based on women’s oppressive and exploitative lived experience are called rejecting feminists. These conflicting accounts of reproductive technologies offer diverse and significant insights to understand the relationship between reproduction, technology and women. Thus, the present paper is an attempt to critically comprehend and engage with the question concerning reproductive technology, especially in relation to women’s emancipation illustrated in two contrasting feminist perspectives. I believe that the two contrasting but interlinked and contemporaneous ethical debates are not only required to evaluate the outcome of technicization of maternal self but also crucial to comprehend the feminist lived experience of being a woman.

In the first section, I have explored the way accepting feminists provide strong arguments in defence of ARTs and justify their stand by demonstrating numerous opportunities for women to free themselves from fixed biological tyranny. In the second section, I have demonstrated the way rejecting feminists have confronted the notion of emancipatory reproductive technology by showing how “reproductive hope” has become a double-edged sword for women’s choice, freedom, identity and agency. They are clear on this point that technology itself is not a problem but its patriarchal construction and interpretation in terms of ARTs have a deleterious consequence on women’s body and self. As a relative being, it is hard for women to get absolute freedom for decision-making. In this situation, emancipatory technology becomes a tool for perpetuating patriarchal ideology for women. Finally, the paper seeks to show the significance of these polarised feminist debates in the wake of feminist consciousness and its limited value to resolve the question concerning the future of reproductive technology as well as dialogues about women’s emancipation. I argue that ARTs are great inventions to fulfil human needs. It is emancipatory only if it follows the egalitarian model for men and women regardless of all social constraints.

Woman’s Emancipation and Technology

The primary concern of feminist debates over ARTs is how to emancipate women from their bodily boundaries. Accepting feminists view technology as a “body transcending potential” tool which has the power to change women’s fate and remake life in the age of biological control. They endorse the use of ARTs for women on the ground that these are instruments for fulfilling women’s reproductive desires and relieving them from their biological destiny of reproducing life as mothers. They tend to see that these technologies can help women in avoiding pregnancy or terminating pregnancy as long as they do not wish to have a child and become a mother. Similarly, infertile couples can be helped to have a child, and single women to have babies without engaging in sexual relations with men. It is not an exaggeration to say that the emergence of the new technologies was hailed as a great leap forward in the project of modernity for expanding our control of the natural world of which our being born and dying are facts of life. The project of modernity had aimed at making our lives and activities subject to human rational control. Some accepting feminists are of the view that reproductive technologies have opened the path for women to reach such a vantage point from where they can move in accordance with their desires and aspirations. These claims provide a positive environment for women using choice-enhancing ARTs. But this is not enough to advocate ARTs as gender neutral and competent tools to support. Feminists claim that “technologies are born in a particular moment in history to a particular society, that they do not fall from heaven and they are not neutral” (Arditti et al. 1984, 12). Thus, we need historical explanation to defend the position in favour of the use of technology and its unbiased employment in women’s life.

It has been documented by many scholars that throughout human history women had to suffer various forms of oppression, exclusion and denial of freedom due to a devaluation of their reproductive bodies. By compiling and analysing details of myths, literature, cultural and religious practices, ideologies, psychology, biology and philosophy, Simone de Beauvoir provided ample evidence that men have projected women as threatening and dangerous for men’s transcendental spiritual and rational pursuits. Women were excluded from the public sphere of human activities as they were confined to their “essential” function of motherhood, i.e. reproduction. Accepting feminists’ claim that reproduction by nature is oppressive for women and technology has the potential to disembody this reproductive act and give relief to women from the burden of pregnancy. Another reason they advocate ARTs is that their use will not only liberate women from coerced reproduction but also provide opportunities for new reproductive choices for those who are infertile, trans-gendered/trans-sexual, gays/lesbian and challenged persons to overcome their limitations and fulfil their desire for biological child. In this manner, it is hoped that ARTs can be used to overcome pervasive gender inequalities and dichotomies such as male/female, culture/nature and machine/human, for achieving liberation for women from oppression. Here, this is also crucial to explore that how in a phallus-centred society women can exercise their agency and value neutral use of technology. In this regard, The Second Sex (de Beauvoir 2009) is the best text to enter into the tension between patriarchal ideology and the role of technology in women’s lives.

In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir (2009) has defended reproductive technologies as a liberatory tool against the tyranny of patriarchy. Contrary to patriarchal claims, de Beauvoir does not see motherhood as women’s destiny, fulfilment and ultimate happiness but a matter of free choice. She maintains that for a woman, “Becoming a mother... means total emancipation for her, if she sincerely desires her pregnancy” (de Beauvoir 2009, 48). She took note of the advantages of technological developments for women as she emphasised that “today, enormous deployment of energy can be commanded at the touch of a switch” (de Beauvoir 2009, 63), and was confident about her hope in future technologies to enable women to overcome their limitations in unequal social situations. De Beauvoir (2009, 64) was of the view that “Technical developments can cancel out the muscular inequality separating man and woman”. Her faith in the potential of technologies as a means of women’s emancipation led her to think about the realm of motherhood as well. De Beauvoir (2009, 139) declares, “Birth control is official and numerous methods have been discovered to dissociate these two formerly inseparable functions: the sexual and the reproduction”. Such discoveries are essential for women to get control over their own body and self in order to make free maternal choices. De Beauvoir (2009, 546) claims that:

Birth control and legal abortion would allow women to control their pregnancies freely. In fact, what decides woman’s fecundity is in part a considerable desire and in part chance. As long as artificial insemination in not widely practised, a woman might desire to become pregnant but be unable to conceive. And, on the other hand, she is often forced to give birth against her will.

De Beauvoir assumes that reproductive technologies have the potential to free humanity from the imprisonment of biology that has vital implications for women’s lives. In favour of artificial insemination, de Beauvoir (2009, 141) further claims that:

With the artificial insemination, the evolution that will permit humanity to master the reproductive function comes to completion. These changes have tremendous importance for woman in particular; she can reduce the number of pregnancies and rationally integrate them into her life, instead of being their slave.

Similarly, the other second wave feminist Shulamith Firestone (1972), in her work The Dialectic of Sex, asserts that the root cause of women’s oppression and subjugation resides in the biological difference between men and women. Firestone (1972, 8) mentions that:

Women throughout history before the advent of birth control were at the continual mercy of their biology—menstruation, menopause, and “female ills” constant painful childbirth, wet nursing and care of infants, all of which made them dependent on males (whether brother, father, husband, lover, or clan, government, community-at-large) for survival.

Against patriarchal ideology of natural motherhood, she attempts to show the unnatural and unrequired process of pregnancy which is not only painful but also barbaric. Firestone (1972, 198) illustrates that:

I do not believe, as many women are now saying that the reason pregnancy is viewed as not beautiful is due to cultural perversion. The child’s first response, “what’s wrong with that Fat Lady?”; the husband’s guilt waning of sexual desire; the woman’s tears in front of the mirror at eight months—are all gut reactions, not to be dismissed as cultural habits. Pregnancy is the temporary deformation of the body of the individual for the sake of species.

Firestone asserts that such oppressively imposed “natural” and “cultural” conditions can be bypassed through the use of promising reproductive technology. For her, only technology has the power to erase the line between men and women which is a backbone of patriarchy and essential for women to them free from their fixed biology i.e. “tyranny of reproduction”. Firestone (1972, 11) says, “The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would be replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction: children would be born to both sexes equally, or independently of either...”. Continuously pleading to other feminists to encourage the use and development of ARTs in order to emancipate women from biological tyranny, Firestone (1972, 202) states:

The full development of artificial reproduction would provide an alternative to the oppression of the biological family... the double curse that man should till the soil by the sweat of his brow and that woman should bear in pain and travail would be lifted through technology to make humane living for the first time a possibility. The feminist movement has the essential mission of creating cultural acceptance of the human race.

In their argument, both de Beauvoir and Firestone clearly express the urgent need of technological interventions for women’s liberation. Despite these impressive reasons given in defence of technology, the key concern is whether these manmade and man-controlled technologies are really neutral and safe for women or a new form of technological suppression for them? To what extend is it right to advocate technologies in a misogynist society? In the landmark work on reproductive technology, Test-Tube Women: What the Future of Motherhood, feminists Rita Arditti, Renate Duelli Klein and Shelley Minden (1984, 6-7) have cautioned women:

Female biology is exploitative in all spheres of all women’s lives. Whether we want children or decide to remain childfree, or beyond our childbearing years, and whatever is our sexual preference, we are at the risk of becoming TEST-TUBE WOMEN – at risk of being subjugated to a variety of control: form technological interference when we are pregnant, to legal regulations that declare that fetus and the women bearing it to be two separate patients’, to workplace policies that pressure women employees to become sterilized.

They argued that the development of technology is a result of materialising patriarchal male desire by controlling women’s maternal self. Technology carries vision and values which are important in a particular society where it is invented. Thus, it cannot be an objective and value-free neutral tool; they are developed by men to assist procreation and to treat “infertility disease” in the western world which is seen differently in developing countries as they promote technology to control the poor’s undesirable “fertility disease”.

Similarly, in Mother Machine: From Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs, Gena Corea (1985) addresses the fear of technological dominance in society and its hazardous impacts on women’s body and their psyche. Corea (1985, 3) mentions how social power relation works behind technological development:

Advocates [of technology] often argue that these technologies do, in fact, bring women new options and choices. But feminists, looking to the Background, have pointed out that any discussion of “rights” and “choice” assumes a society in which there is no serious differences of power and authority between individuals. Where power differences do prevail, coercion (subtle and otherwise) is also apt to prevail.

In this way, she also condemned ARTs by calling them another oppressive patriarchal tool to subjugate and control women. The crucial problem here is, how can we break the power structure of society which is based on male dominance over women’s body? The answer can be through appropriate use of technology, say accepting feminists. Marge Piercy, Barbara Katz Rothman, Donna Haraway and other feminists have envisaged and presented a supportive platform for women employing ARTs. They believe that any technological invention can be harmful if it is misused including ARTs. On the other hand, it may be another significant step and extended way to assist the reproductive process, and possibility to understand women’s biology in a more detailed manner.

Marge Piercy (1976), another feminist thinker in her book, Woman on the Edge of Time, has demonstrated her support for ARTs by following Firestone’s reproductive project. Piercy advocates women’s freedom from the bounded biological reproduction by using all available technological facilities, and recognising child care as social responsibility (Lublin 1998, 184). Piercy envisaged various means to liberate women from the maternal role in her book, which not only questions and denies women’s maternal responsibilities by projecting the possibility of child birthing from machines and nurturing by men, and gender-neutral societal approach. Piercy (1976, 106) mentions that “it was a part of women’s long revolution, when we were breaking all the older hierarchies. Finally, there was that one thing we had to give up too, the only power we ever had, in birth”. Like de Beauvoir and Firestone, Piercy also upholds the idea that child rearing should be socialised and equal responsibility of men, women and other units of society instead of remaining as mother’s sole work and accountability. She has supported the idea of gender-neutral capacity of child bearing and rearing in which technology is able to assist. Accepting feminists perceive technology as a way of women’s transcendence from the social immanence. They are of the view that technology itself is not a patriarchal tool rather emerged as a neutral helping hand for women’s assistance. But how much neutral technology is we need to reflect upon.

In this regard, it is significant to discuss Katz Rothman’s stance on “questions concerning reproductive technology”. In her book, The Tentative Pregnancy: Prenatal Diagnosis and the Future of Technology, Katz Rothman (1986) describes and advocates the gender-neutral promising nature of technological device and its transforming potential which is a sign of progressive thinking and change. She emphasises that technology, devoid of all patriarchal values, is a source of new possibilities for women to overcome biological limitations imposed by society, and control their reproductive selves. Katz Rothman (1986, 3) suggests:

I am not claiming that the technology itself is harmful. I think that the new technology of reproduction offers us an opportunity to work on our definition of parenthood, of motherhood, fatherhood and childhood, to rethink and improve our relations with each other in families. Freed from some of the biological constraints, we could evolve better, more egalitarian ways of relating to ourselves and each other in reproduction.

Nevertheless, Katz Rothman (1984, 32-33) further advices every woman and feminist regarding the polities around ARTs that attempts to devalue such significant invention:

[Women] must not get caught into discussions of which reproductive technologies are ‘politically correct,’ which empower and which enslave women. They ALL empower and they ALL enslave, they all can be used, by for or against us. We will have to lift our eyes from the choices of the individual woman, and focus on the control of the social system which structures her choices.

Katz Rothman indicates the way political control turns into social control and diminishes women’s choices. Thus, it is not technology that is a problem but the real problem lies underneath the very structure of society that manipulates it into an oppressive tool. Additionally, some feminists pose objection against Descartes’s unbridgeable mind body dualism that is taken as an analogy to create the dichotomous idea of superior “masculinised mind” and inferior “feminised bodies”, and that became the major cause of women’s subjugated status rather technology itself. In this regard, Susan Stryker (2003) emphasises women’s embodied difference instead of material resemblances. Also, she discards the idea of biological essentialism in terms of motherhood and women-nature metaphor which is acknowledged by Rejecting feminists. According to her, it is erroneous to perceive female as nearer to “nature” and male to “techno-culture” and patriarchy. She accepts Donna Haraway’s (1991) image of the “cyborg” in order to support technological interventions in women’s life. For her, treating science and technology merely as “the Phallus” or societal power symbol is not a correct way of interpreting feminism.

In favour of technology, cyber feminist Donna Haraway (1991, 69) introduces the image of the “cyborg”, meaning a “cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” which is an image of independent and liberated self. This theory explores the binary structure under which these symbolic dichotomies exist. Haraway (1991, 71) explains:

No longer structured by the polarity of public and private, the cyborg defines a technological polis based partly on a revolution of social relations in the oikos, the household. Nature and culture are reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation by the other.

Haraway’s theory of the cyborg human has blurred the line between human and machine. The self is the “human-machine”, an independent and autonomous free being which is One. Haraway (1991, 81) mentions that “the self is the One who is not dominated… to be One is to be autonomous, to be powerful, to be God”. This way, cyber feminists attempt to undermine the pervasive female techno stereotype that women are associated with nature and men with technology by illustrating women’s connection with technologies. Unlike rejecting feminists, they show the power of technology to break the gender barrier and its association with feminine self. Rosanne Stone (1999) also supports Haraway’s idea that technology has drastically changed the universal analogy of women nature. This redefinition of women’s nature not only has separated women from the traditional conception of nature but also has given its new interpretation that women have adopted now is technological nature called cyborg in Haraway’s words. Further, it dislocates hegemonic patriarchy binary as the use of reproductive technology empowers women on the one hand, and disempowers men on the other.

Moreover, accepting feminists directly argue that technologies are helpful to transgress the limits of our physical boundaries. They help the people with bodily disability and people who want to have babies but it is not possible for them without other means, for instance, lesbians and gay men, women and men with different kinds of infertility issues ignored by the rejecting feminists as they have no solutions available for these couples who are willing to have a child but physically helpless. They want their biological child and people with congenital disabilities or carriers of defective genes that they wish to prevent to be passed on to their children. They use technology to avoid reproductive deficiencies. They choose technology as their free choice. Thus, we can say that freedom to choose is an essential aspect of women's agency which encompasses technological choices too. However, the questions to be asked: Is technology increasing extending the patriarchal ideology of motherhood? Why motherhood is still essential to women? Why couples are so much absorbed to have their biological child? Why infertility is viewed as a disease that needs to be treated? Again, technology is invented by men to fulfil some social purposes, then how can it be a value-free tool for women to use? These questions are intriguing that divulge the vulnerability of women’s maternal body and power of technology that remain unanswered by accepting feminists.

Birth and Bodily Vulnerability

In contrast to accepting feminists, rejecting feminists provide a diverse account on women’s body and ARTs. Their position focuses on male supremacy in reproduction and his technological control over female body, misleading market strategics of ARTs, exclusion of women’s choice and her exploitative body-machine imagery which makes them vulnerable. They share women’s lived experiences of ARTs into public domain by emphasising on the line, “personal is political” which was the critical stance towards the women-technology relation. Rejecting feminists believe in the strength of women’s “natural reproductive capacity” which is mechanised and distorted with the use of ARTs. Unlike de Beauvoir and Firestone, they tend to see ARTs as a source of vulnerability and exploitation, and a subtle extension of the patriarchal mindset to control women’s reproductive body and perpetuate the ideology of motherhood. Spallone and Steinberg (1987, 9), for example, claim that:

Reproductive technology offers the possibility to extend the shaping of the “fit mother” to include the “fit reproducer.” The state is directly involved through its support for and control of science and technology. There is no corresponding “fit father” role.

According to them, the concealed reason behind women’s bodily control is men’s “womb envy” i.e. their fear and alienation from nature due to their limited reproductive role. Rowland (1992, 292) says that reproductive technologies are designed and used by men to conquer their womb envy from nature. Rejecting feminists unveil the deep-rooted socio-political and economic inequalities and biases, commodification around ARTs that are masked by manufacturers of ARTs in various ways and urge women to be aware of it. In the prologue of the book, Made to Order: the Myth of Reproductive and Genetic Progress (Spallone and Steinberg 1987), feminists such as Corea, Klein, Rowland and Raymond encourage women to reject ARTs and express themselves in these words (Spallone and Steinberg 1987, 10):

We need to break the silence. Women need to know what happens to their bodies and mind when they enter an IVF program. We all need to know the enormous economic investments at stake for multinational drug companies and scientists to continue embryo research: to make money for the former; to become famous for the later.

They revaluated the concept of “choice” and “coercion” in the light of culturally marked gender differences and techniques of control, and found that reproductive choices are rhetorical in nature. Choices are socially structured and coerced but appear as a free act of an individual. They are based on the social and material situations that allow women to freely exercise them without any constraints. Throwing light on the deceptive nature of technological choices, feminists ask a general question (Spallone and Steinberg 1987, 7):

Does this so-called “choice” increase the control of women over that technology and over their own lives?... No. In fact, the desire of some individual women to “choose” this technology places women a group at risk. With the new reproductive technology, women are being used as living laboratories and are slowly, but surely being divorced from control over procreation.

These feminists argue that in order to obtain free bodily choices, women need to develop strategies for getting control over their own sexuality and reproduction along with staying free from the use of patriarchal tool i.e. ARTs. An international network of feminist activists, FINRRAGE (Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering), has openly protested against sexist reproductive technologies in these words, “technodocs do not want to help women. They want to control us. New reproductive technology provides them with the powerful means to do so” (Spallone and Steinberg 1987, 7). Thus, resistance is the only way to save women from these exploitative technologies. They strongly appeal to all women that “By rejecting these technologies we take a woman-centred stance… we should not forget that… the ‘technodocs’ need our bodies… if we deny them our bodies and speak out angrily against them in public, then perhaps they will be forced to stop” (Spallone and Steinberg 1987, 11). They argue that these technologies treat women’s body as an incubator or a machine which can be used or abused for various scientific and technological experiments. Now it is time to refuse their demands by condemning technology. It is important to note that these feminists are against the exploitative use of technology, but they are not against technology itself as they mention, “by rejecting these technologies, we are not insensitive or paranoid or anti-technology grouches” (Spallone and Steinberg 1987, 11) rather they are rejecting the way it is fabricated and implemented.

Rejecting feminists hold the idea that a woman is an autonomous being and her reproductive capacity is fundamental to her subjectivity, so it should be regulated and controlled exclusively by her. This assumption underlying the expression that by intervention to alter women’s natural reproductive bodies through ARTs leads to weaken and undermine their feminine identity. It also places threats to women’s autonomy, power, choices and control over their bodies. Feminists such as Vandana Shiva, Maria Mies, Irene Diamond, Margaret Atwood, Carolyn Merchants and others have expressed their apprehensions and cautioned against these threats by addressing pervasive deep-rooted patriarchal dichotomous symbolisation of subject/object, active/passive, men/women and culture/nature which are used to establish hierarchical power relation. Irene Diamond (1988, 97) has reflected on finding ways to strengthen women’s linking with nature by relating their reproductive problems with environmental issues and its effect on women’s live. Similarly, Margaret Atwood (1985), in her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, depicts a miserable future for human society as the result of such reproductive fundamentalism: the incessant increase of use of ARTs causes mass infertility in women, as there is an elevated chance of giving birth to deformed child. Shiva (1999, 5) points out that reproduction has been linked to the mechanisation of the female body in which a set of fragmented, fetishised and replaceable parts are managed by professional medical experts. As we have discussed earlier that the reproduction was primarily woman’s affair but due to technological intervention transferred into males’ hand because of their upgraded knowledge about women’s body. Now men have re-created and reinvented women as “essential mothers” in the male medical system. For this reason, they have not only devalued women’s experience about their maternal self but also took proper control over her body which is another way of exercising patriarchy.

These feminists do not trust Western scientific technological paradigms which are apparently based on men’s domination of nature and their vicious association with women. This is further evident from Carolyn Merchant’s (1980) book, The Death of Nature, in which modern science is demonstrated as the essence of man and nature i.e. woman. She explains the way the metaphor of “nature” has moved from nature as a machine in the modern age. She argues that “death of nature” happens with the success of a “mechanistic metaphor” for nature. This shows the victory of science and technology on the one hand and the defeat of “mother nature” in various ways on the other hand (Lam 2015, 44-45). Through these theories, feminists illustrate the “patriarchal technoscientific” idea which is ingrained in throughout western thought processes and still continuing by the tools of new reproductive technologies.

Rejecting feminists caution that ARTs are the further extension of a deep-rooted technoscientific patriarchy that works both ways—control of knowledge and use of technological apparatuses. These two dimensions are mutually supportive as science creates cultural framework for the amalgamation of new technologies such as ARTs. In this context, Patricia Spallone (1989) has illustrated how technologies are redefining the meaning of procreation in society at the cost of women’s life by imposing coercive social/ethical rules and norms. These coercive social relations also provide ample ground for the growth of such technology (Spallone 1989, 4). This displacement of authoritative power from women to technology further disembodies women by interrupting women-nature relation in both symbolical and literal ways. Such practices reconceptualise the woman-nature relation by reducing women into merely mechanical body parts calling it “techo-docs” (Lie 2002, 4) and connecting them to motherhood. According to Lie (2002, 82):

An implicit new story of procreation is that science has gained insight into the totality of process. Symbolically, woman is no longer ‘the creator of children’ in accordance with the cultural theory of matrigenesis, but rather one of the several participants of the process.

It follows that women are deprived of their procreative choices and lose control over their bodies. Men have gained all women’s procreative control and exploiting it for profit and power. Corea claims that these so-called emancipatory technologies cannot be a neutral tool as it is scientific development of male possession, their values, norms and interpretation of reality. Technologies are governed by the patriarchal male authorities in the form of medical practitioners, commercialised manufacturers and state technocrats in which women’s role is decided by male perspective only. Corea (1985, 4) emphasises the status of women in patriarchy:

Reproductive technology is a product of male reality. The values expressed in the technology—objectification, domination—are typical of the male culture. The technology is male generated are buttresses male power over women. It is true that some women are now engaged in reproductive technology as physicians, nurses, entrepreneurs. They are accepted in this field because they abide by the rules male values dictate. Their gender is female but the reality from which they operate is male.

Furthermore, it is believed that an ART discourse allows feminists to obtain abortion rights. They say that pro-ART and pro-choice are similar. Raymond (1993, 85) points out that “To be pro-choice, however, is not necessarily to be pro-woman… choice is more rhetorical than reality”. Feminists argue that an infertile woman actually does not have a choice but to go for ART as she is identified for her procreative role. In patriarchy, women are forced to seek assistance from ATRs which seems as if they are doing it voluntarily. In this situation, infertility becomes “disease” and women are coerced to embrace ART treatment. Barbara Katz Rothman (1984, 30) argues that “it seems that, in gaining the choice to control the quality of our children, we may be losing the choice not to control the quality, the choice of simply accepting them as they are”. Choices based on historical and socio-cultural conditions enforce the use of ARTs in the name of making “better” or “rational” choices, which is actually less or NO choice for women.

Feminists argue that real choice cannot be possible in unequal gendered relations which undermine the autonomy of women. The questions who and what ultimately controls and which choices are available simply end into polarised debates for or against ARTs and not necessarily with the participation of women who are likely to use them. They illustrate the paradoxical situation of women in making her choices (Katz Rothman 1984, 6):

Physicians present the new reproductive technologies (NRTs) as boons to women, providing us with new “options” in childbearing. But will women have the option of not using those technologies? Will we be able to refuse them? Or will their use become compulsory as is the tendency with obstetrical technology such as ultrasound scanning.

This scenario precludes the deleterious effects of ARTs, which diminish actual question of choice. Highlighting this point, Rebick (1993, 88) states that:

In a class and race divided society, freedom of choice for one woman can mean virtual slavery for another, for example, contract motherhood; thus, protecting some women from the exploitation that NRTs will inevitably bring justifies the abrogation of some women’s individual freedom of choice.

Additionally, many feminists support contraceptive—but not conceptive—technology on the basis of “choices” rhetoric. Rowland (1992) puts it in this way that “a woman’s right to choose” is actually “a woman’s right to control” and this control comes through abortion which enables them “to control their lives in a less than perfect world”. However, for conceptive choices, she assumes that these choices finally reduce women’s procreative control over their own maternal bodies. Thus, a rejecting feminist opposes ARTs on the basis of its unequal gender treatment.

Conclusion: Towards an Egalitarian Technological Approach

To that end, it can be said that human excursion from “naturebeing” to becoming a “technobeing” is a sign of growth as well as destruction. Reproductive technologies emerged with infinite hope and possibilities to alter the terrain of limited reproductive choices, and pave a way to women’s emancipation. However, appearance is different from reality which is aptly applicable to the question concerning technology. In the context of ARTs, there is always a gap between women’s lived experience of technology and the way it is inaccurately portrayed as a “hope technology” or “happiness means” in society, which is illustrated differently by accepting and rejecting feminists. Following these two contrasting feminists’ insights, it has been observed that both have assumed different notions of liberation within the framework of patriarchy and confinement of women’s bodily choices. They concede that woman’s maternal self is controlled and regulated by men; nevertheless, they take different positions and give separate explanations. Rejecting feminists believe that ARTs are oppressive rather than emancipatory due to their exploitative and oppressive patriarchal nature, whereas accepting feminists view ARTs as a liberating tool that has the potential to transcend women from their biological confinement or deficiencies, and are based on sexual equality. They advocate and encourage women to embrace ARTs to free themselves from biological determinism. These interpretations are significant but failed to resolve women’s inferior status in society where birthing and mothering are seen as an integral aspect of her identity and happiness even now. Childless women feel neglected and excluded from other social relations such as mothers, parents and friends. In this situation, reproductive technology is the last hope in her hopelessness which is not addressed by the above group of feminists. At least she has a satisfaction that she has made her last effort to achieve her desire through “technological happiness means” that forces her towards cruel optimism, i.e. technicization which is an unavoidable beginning of endless series of failed ART trial trap. Franklin (2013, 218) states that:

the choice to undertake IVF may be made on the basis of a kind of guarantee that at least if you fail, you have the compensatory satisfaction of having tried everything, meaning you will at least not be worse off even if you do not succeed in bringing home the much-desired take home baby

Women share their personal experience regarding these technologies that despite the imagery of benevolent technology and happy media narratives, reproductive technologies are failed to fulfil their maternal desire, but they want to it! They are expected to be objectified as Franklin has stated, and wanted to be treated as “uteruses and tubes” from doctors due to their social conditioning. Franklin (2013, 215) says:

They’re technical, they’re success oriented, they want to get pregnancies—that’s their job… to do IVF and to put embryos back, and to keep doing it day after day after day, with lots of women coming through on a conveyor belt. I don’t see how they can avoid just seeing women as objects because after all, that’s what they are to them… just uteruses and tubes.

Thus, denouncing technology is not the ultimate answer to the question concerning reproduction and women. Technology alone cannot do transformation or reform as it is governed and conditioned by the societal ideology that creates a hierarchy between men and women according to their biological bodies. We need to break the pervasive inegalitarian patriarchal mindset that treats a woman merely as a womb and “the second sex” as Simone de Beauvoir charged. This is the only way women can attain equal respect to men and able to exercise their technological reproductive choices in a true and dignified sense. Feminist appeal that (Arditti et al. 1984, 21):

We seek a different kind of science and technology that respects the dignity of womankind and all life on earth. We call upon women and men to break the fatal link between mechanistic science and vested industrial interests and to take part with us in the development of a new unity of knowledge and life.

Declarations

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.