Australian law affirms a binary construction of fertility/infertility. This model is based upon the medical categorization of infertility as a disease. Law supports medicine in prioritizing technology, such as in vitro fertilization, as treatment for infertility. This prioritization of a medico-legal model of infertility in turn marginalizes alternative means of family creation such as adoption, fostering, traditional surrogacy, and childlessness. This paper argues that this binary model masks the impact of medicalization upon reproductive choice and limits opportunity for infertile individuals (...) to create families. While medical technology should be available to enhance reproductive opportunity, infertile individuals will benefit from regulatory change which disentangles the medico-legal construct of infertility as a disease from the desire to create a family. This paper suggests that the medico-legal model of infertility should be reframed to support all opportunities for family creation equally, including non-medical opportunities such as adoption, fostering, and childlessness. (shrink)

Travel for reproductive health care has become a widespread global phenomenon. Within the field, the decision to travel to seek third parties to assist with reproduction is widely assumed to be autonomous. However there has been scant research exploring the application of the principle of autonomy to the experience of the cross-border traveller. Seeking to contribute to the growing, but still small, body of sociological bioethics research, this paper maps the application of the ethical principle of autonomy to the lived (...) experience of infertile individuals who cross borders for reproductive care. It examines their choices as patient, consumer and traveller. It suggests that their experience evidences a contradictory autonomy, which offers them both choice and no choice in their final decision to travel. The paper argues that this lack of meaningful autonomy is enabled by a medicalised framework of infertility which prioritises technology as the cure to infertility. This both shapes expectations of infertile individuals and limits their options of family creation. Ultimately, the paper suggests that sociological bioethics research shows that the liberatory credentials of technology should be questioned, and identifies that this field demands greater scholarly attention. (shrink)

Cryopreservation of human embryos remains, in many jurisdictions, a critical component of the use of the technology of in vitro fertilisation in assisted reproduction. However, although the reasons for the freezing of reproductive material—such as cost effectiveness and reducing risks of IVF—are a constant across jurisdictions, the desirable length of storage remains subject to ongoing regulatory debate. Internationally embryo storage limits are variable. This article features data from a recent Australian research project which explores individual attitudes, desires and understandings of (...) law of IVF patients who had or who have embryos in storage. This article uses interviews from the study to argue that storage limits, like any apparently neutral regulatory tool, apply unequally causing unintended physical, mental and emotional harm—particularly to women. This analysis of storage limits exposes the interaction of time, science and law to create, apply and enforce norms and practices of ‘natural’ embryo storage, suggesting that the imposition of inflexible legislative restrictions upon embryo storage are socially contingent and value laden rather than ‘natural’ or ‘scientific’. This outcome has relevance to wider debates over assisted reproduction policies, suggesting that legal frameworks should adopt more flexibility in application to the patients who use this technology. (shrink)