Lisääntymisen ajan sukupuolistunut etiikka: tiede, teknologia ja markkinat (ReproTime)/ Gendered Ethics of Reproductive Time: Science, Technology and the Market

The temporal logics of reproduction are being changed in novel ways by recent developments in assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), the growing commercialisation of healthcare, and the rapid expansion of biotechnological and pharmaceutical enterprises. Technological practices have demonstrated that reproductive time is not “a given fact of life” but constructed by science, technology, and bioindustry. Further, the temporalities involved in reproduction result from and are subject to constant political negotiations and ethical disputes. Norms regarding reproductive time are imposed on people in ways that map onto existing intersectional oppressions including gender, race, class, sexuality and disability, contributing to the stratification of reproduction in general.

This Academy Project is concerned with how time modified by ARTs becomes the subject of ethical evaluation. It considers three technological practices in the interrelated sites of science, healthcare and bioindustry: 1) reproductive tissue donation; 2) gamete/embryo cryopreservation; 3) health-data-driven artificial intelligence and machine learning apps in fertility treatments. To conceptualise these practices, the project mobilises the notions of ethical labour and queer bioethics in a framework that acknowledges the importance of affectivity in ethics. By exploring ethical evaluations, the study seeks to account for the moral ambivalences of ARTs and their temporal consequences as both oppressive and enabling.

By combining social sciences and academic bioethics, the study will overcome the dichotomy between empirical and normative approaches, which to date has characterised research on reproductive technologies and perpetuated intellectual weaknesses in both approaches. The project will also have political and healthcare implications, providing useful knowledge for professionals, bioethicists and policymakers. It will help to pinpoint how gendered and social inequalities emerge in practice.

The project focuses on Finland, where a state-funded Nordic welfare system is combined with a growing transnational commercial care business. The methodological orientation of the research is multi-sited ethnography and theoretical analysis. The research material consists of video recordings, observations, interviews and documents collected from fertility clinics, research institutions, healthcare companies and agencies.