Spoken Through Desire: Maternal Subjectivity and Assisted Reproduction

Abstract

This article addresses maternal subjectivity in relation to assisted reproductive technology (ART) and infertility. Although ART is used widely, discourse surrounding this technology remains largely unarticulated in psychoanalytic writing, a silence that may reflect a collective struggle to process its meanings. Engaging the work of Lacan and his emphasis on subversion and desire, I discuss my work with Nora, a woman who undergoes ART for 8 years, and explore the loss and abjection she faces surrounding infertility and ART's repeated failures. I argue that a technology dialogic around reproduction produces an illusion of control and an implicit promise of success that latches onto the notion of motherhood as the idealization of femininity. Reflecting on ART in a cultural and intergenerational context, I explore ART's discourse for both its creative, nonnormative potentials as well as for reproducing constricting, social practices.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An earlier version of this article was presented at an event co-sponsored by New York University's Center for Studies in Gender and Sexuality and Studies in Gender and Sexuality, February 15, 2013.

I am grateful to Julia Beltsiou, Jessica Benjamin, Muriel Dimen, Orna Guralnik, Kirsten Lentz, James Ogilvie, Olga Pugachevsky, Avgi Saketopoulou, Maura Sheehy, and Jamieson Webster for reading drafts of this article.

Notes

¹Intrauterine insemination is a medical procedure in which washed sperm is injected directly into the uterus for the purpose of pregnancy (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2013b).

²In vitro fertilization is a surgical procedure in which eggs are removed from the ovaries, fertilized outside of the body, and then transferred back to the uterus as one or more embryos (CDC, 2013b). Injectable hormonal drugs are often used to stimulate the ovaries for the purpose of retrieving eggs. The injections can cause painful, at times life-threatening, side effects.

³An accruing discourse on capitalism and classism can be heard here as well, namely, that anything and everything is possible at a certain price, and ART carries an often prohibitively high price tag.

⁴Ethics surrounding ART and commerce is much debated. Browner and Sargent's (2011) collection of essays examines commerce in reproductive materials, which is quite lucrative as body parts, commodified, enter the international trade. They explore, to name a few debates, class dynamics that place the poor in positions as bio-available suppliers of reproductive materials; the ethics of gifting “spare embryos”; gender politics surrounding reproductive choice; and gametes crossing religious, ethnic, and racial borders to enter other bodies.

⁵Harvesting refers to the egg retrieval process in which ovaries are hyperstimulated with hormonal drugs to produce multiple mature (ripe) eggs that are then gathered for donation, insemination, or freezing. G.I.F.T.ing (gamete intrafallopian transfer) is a surgical procedure in which eggs are removed from the ovaries and placed in the fallopian tubes with sperm for purposes of insemination (CDC, 2013b). Donation is a heated issue. Sperm and eggs can be donated; however, egg donation is a much more complicated process, involving lengthy medical/psychological screenings and medically invasive IVF procedures. Compensation laws vary by country. For example, in the United States donors are always paid and compensation for egg donation is unregulated, raising ethical debates about egg donors' motives (i.e., monetary gain, withholding medical information to ensure compensation, and limiting egg donation to those who can afford it). Gendered dynamics are clearly at play, in which women who choose to donate for “monetary gain” are criticized over those who donate for “altruistic” reasons, reproducing gendered stereotypes.