Intimate Lives in the Global Bioeconomy: Reproductive Biographies of Mexican Egg Donors

Abstract

Research on cross-border reproductive care has shown how the geographical, historical, economic and political contexts in which egg donation takes place shape this transnational practice. As many women offer their oocytes due to their precarious conditions, they become seen as ‘bioavailable bodies’. The presence of these bioavailable bodies is key to the emergence of global egg donation hotspots. We argue that feminist research needs to go beyond the conceptualization of egg donors as bioavailable bodies. We suggest the analysis of ‘reproductive biographies’ as an innovative way to understand the entanglements of the global bioeconomy with intimate experiences of reproduction. We suggest advancing current feminist discussions around clinical labour by (1) studying the entanglements between the global bioeconomy, a neoliberalized healthcare system, systematic feminicide and women’s reproductive biographies, and by (2) revealing how women’s decision to donate results from gendered dependencies, obligations of care and coercive moments in egg donors’ reproductive biographies.

Bioeconomía una alternativa para México. Análisis bibliométrico a la Web of Science.

“…Otra área que también ha tomado relevancia en los últimos años es la biorrefinería con (Nawaz et al, 2020) enfoque de cero desechos, pues ha adquirido un gran interés por la investigación como área para impulsar el medio ambiente y la bioeconomía de manera sostenible, señala a las aguas residuales de las industrias azucareras pueden convertirse en un punto clave para mejorar su economía, esto ha derivado el interés de su estudio como método de elección para una explotación sostenible de una amplia gama de materia de desechos orgánicos junto con la producción de productos de alto valor y de interés industrial (Perler & Schurr, 2020).…”

“…Como muchas mujeres ofrecen sus ovocitos debido a sus condiciones precarias y se les considera como "cuerpos biodisponibles". La presencia de estos cuerpos biodisponibles es clave para el surgimiento de puntos calientes de donación de óvulos a nivel mundial (Perler & Schurr, 2020).…”

Emotion, embodiment, and reproductive colonialism in the global human egg trade

“…Whereas local economies and fertility clinics in destination locations benefit from fertility travel—or “fertility holidays,” as Speier examines in the Czech Republic (2016)—like other types of tourism, for local populations it is a double‐edged sword. Fertility outsourcing may provide economically deprived women some financial relief, but not without potential physical and emotional risks providing eggs or gestational surrogacy services (Perler & Schurr, 2020; Subramaniam, 2015, 2017). In most cases, gestational surrogates are used to carry and birth babies created from egg providers who match the intended parents' phenotype, and reflect predominantly European standards of beauty.…”

“…In her study of Australian cross‐border reproductive care, Millbank (2018) examines how facilitators and service providers manage matchmaking and relationships between donors and intended parents, the ethical concerns that arise when the needs of different parties conflict, and how facilitators understand allegiance in intimate labor. Other feminist‐oriented analyses have likewise examined the “intimate labor” facilitators provide while arranging egg donation journeys in Thailand and the Czech Republic (Whittaker and Speier, 2010; Speier, 2016), how altruistic narratives are manipulative, and infiltrate fertility outsourcing (Almeling, 2011; Esposti & Pavone, 2019; Tober, 2001, 2019), and how egg donors' “reproductive biographies” in Mexico are intrinsically connected to global bioeconomies and systematic feminicide (Perler & Schurr, 2020). We contribute to these conversations by examining how “emotional choreography” is an underlying catalyst for creating bioavailable bodies, how management and framing of emotion enables smooth market functioning across borders, and how different types of reproductive labor is stratified and reflects entrenched systems of power and privilege.…”

“…Other countries, like Cambodia, Mexico, Laos, Kenya, and the Ukraine, quickly emerged to fill the gap. Economic, legal, and postcolonial geographies shape the global fertility market (Perler & Schurr, 2020; Schurr, 2018)—including the laws of supply and demand.…”