Procreative tourism: debating the meaning of cross-border reproductive care in the 21st century

Inhorn, Marcia C.; Patrizio, Pasquale

doi:10.1586/eog.12.56

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 18 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Although the term ‘reproductive tourism’ has been debated and criticized for its misplaced focus on ‘pleasure’ in a form of travel that is mostly out of desperation ( Inhorn and Patrizio, 2009 ; Pennings, 2005 ), several scholars have simultaneously emphasized that the label ‘tourism’ may well resonate with some aspects of this form of travel ( Bergmann, 2011 , Deomampo, 2013 , Speier, 2016 , Whittaker and Speier, 2010 ). For instance, in her ethnography of North Americans' pursuit of IVF in the Czech Republic, anthropologist Amy Speier describes how her respondents conceptualize their travel as both treatment and vacation.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendered bio-responsibilities and travelling egg providers from South Africa

Pande¹,

Moll²

2018

Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

‘Unsuspecting young South African women are heading overseas to donate their eggs to infertile couples and earn a free international holiday in the process. But, at what cost?’ This was the voice-over during a news show in South Africa in 2016 that described the phenomenon of young white South African women going abroad to ‘donate’ their eggs. Through the media, medical professionals sought to warn ‘naïve girls’ about ‘unscrupulous agencies’ taking advantage of them, and in doing so putting them at grave medical risks in ‘Third World’ clinics. Yet owners of agencies and egg providers themselves countered this imagery; here, the egg provider becomes a far more complex biocitizen who finds an opportunity to combine an act of altruism with an opportunity to earn money and travel. Through interviews with travelling egg providers, doctors and egg agencies, and analysis of public and social media, we analyse these competing discourses critically by situating them within the specific context of egg provision in South Africa. We argue that travelling egg providers' defence of their involvement may challenge some gendered assumptions made by the media and medical staff, but at the same time reaffirm what we call ‘gendered bio-responsibilities’, or the gendered nature of the emphasis on (individual) responsibilization of biological citizens. By focusing on a relatively understudied aspect of the burgeoning literature on biocitizenship, we argue that the project of biocitizenship assists the expansion and normalization of new biomedical technologies, often without proper emphasis on the disproportionate obligations on the women involved.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendered bio-responsibilities and travelling egg providers from South Africa

Pande¹,

Moll²

2018

Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Global abortion travel really began in the 1960s when certain countries such as Japan, Poland, Sweden, Mexico, and Switzerland relaxed their abortion laws and became destinations for women who were able to travel ( Sethna and Doull 2012 ). The ability to travel and the experiences of that travel remains highly asymmetrical with young women, indigenous women, rural women, women on low incomes, and trans and non-binary people disproportionately affected by obstacles to abortion access ( Doran and Nancarrow 2015 ; Silva and McNeill 2008 ).…”

Section: The Abortion Journeymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The majority of scholarship on reproductive mobility has focused on transnational travel for in vitro fertilization ( Bergmann 2011 ) and surrogacy ( Deomampo 2013 ). Thus, there has been a disproportionate focus on ‘procreative tourism’ ( Inhorn and Patrizio 2012 ) as opposed to abortion. Alongside reproduction, gender also remains understudied in the mobilities literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Viapolitics and the emancipatory possibilities of abortion mobilities

Freeman

2020

Mobilities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scholarship on abortion travel has examined the places women travel between and why such journeys are necessary. However, there has been scant attention paid to the journeys themselves and how these journeys are undertaken. This paper uses William Walters' notion of 'viapolitics' to better attend to how people travel by focussing on the role of vehicles in abortion politics. This takes three parts: an exploration of the emotional and embodied journeys that women have to take to access abortions; the role of the vehicle as a site of political activism around abortion rights; and the transportation of abortion medication. Viapolitics has to date only been used within migration politics but as this paper shows, it has utility beyond this field to interrogate abortion travels and highlight the role of vehicles in abortion access as well as to explore how abortion transport can be emancipatory for women. This paper furthers viapolitics by arguing that we need to consider the journeys of 'things' and not just people. In the case of abortion access, it is the transportation of abortion medication rather than the travel of women that is the most socially just solution to discriminatory laws and extra-legal barriers.

show abstract

“…The marketization of medicine is giving salience to new forms of translocal and trasnational health care, an aspect that represents the second gradient of this analysis. An increasingly emergent intersection between health and mobility is what comes under the general definition of “medical tourism.” The term encompasses a wide range of phenomena, from Western citizens seeking more affordable treatment in developing countries (Turner ) to “healing holidays” in spa resorts and “reproductive exiles” for couples experimenting with reproductive technologies (Inhorn and Patrizio ; Inhorn et al ). Within this heterogeneity, medical tourism points to widespread processes of deterritorialization of health care (Turner :323).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Pluralism in Oral Health Care: Dom Informal Dentists in Northern Lebanon

Bochi

2014

Med Anthropol Q

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article describes a pluralistic regime of oral health provision in a rural part of northern Lebanon, where dental care came from two main sources: professionally trained dentists and "informal" Dom dentists with Syrian nationality. Relying on a combination of interviews and ethnography, I offer a multivocal view of oral health services that incorporates data from patients and formal and informal providers. I argue that informal dentistry constituted an interstitial and translocal mode of dental care. In the northern Lebanese Biqa Valley, close to the Syrian border, the local articulation of neoliberal health governance created opportunities for heterodox practices in oral health. The organization of informality was predicated on the presence of the open border between Syria and Lebanon, which favored patterns of flexible cross-border mobility. In this context, informal dentistry was not alternative, but supplementary and lateral in relation to official forms of oral health provision.

show abstract

Procreative tourism: debating the meaning of cross-border reproductive care in the 21st century

Cited by 11 publications

References 18 publications

Gendered bio-responsibilities and travelling egg providers from South Africa

Gendered bio-responsibilities and travelling egg providers from South Africa

Viapolitics and the emancipatory possibilities of abortion mobilities

Exploring Pluralism in Oral Health Care: Dom Informal Dentists in Northern Lebanon

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About