579
Reproductive Rights Under Commercialized and Politicized Medical Discourses
Language: English
As the limitations of assisted reproductive technology have become known, particularly for infertile women of advanced age, professionals in the field of medicine, epidemiology, and health education have emphasized educating people about reproductive issues for healthy pregnancy and childbirth. On the Internet, many “fertility sites” target people (mainly women) seeking information about pregnancy, childbirth, and infertility treatments. Books and magazines feature issues on human reproduction. These popularized information sources can include incorrect, inaccurate, or exaggerated messages.
Knowledge about reproductive medicine is also important for governments interested in maintaining their countries’ populations from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Governments often try to utilize scientific knowledge to control people’s reproductive behaviors.
This conduct by professionals and governments is a crucial factor in exploring people’s rights and choices, gender relations, and the power structure in reproduction. This session invites papers related to these issues. Examples of expected themes are: the changing discourse on reproduction owing to the globalization of the medical/pharmaceutical industry and institutionalization of evidence-based medicine, debate on how to guarantee the reliability of medical information, relationships between population policy and reproductive medicine, contemporary faces of eugenics, and the tension between the gender movement/policy and gender-based medical/biological science.