"‘Two Babies, Two Races, One Womb, Three Parents’ : New Reproductive Technologies and Cross-Racial Births"
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ABSTRACT:
New Reproductive Technology has had a profound effect on the way racial identification is re-"conceived". In the last ten years, there have been three prominent cases (one in the US, one in England and one in the Netherlands) in which white women have given birth to black children. In
each case, there was a mix-up at the IVF clinic. Though the particulars differ, the important result is the redefinition of body boundaries and racial identification.
The Fasano/Rogers case in New York and the Stuart case in the Netherlands held national attention in the United States and Canada. Both were featured on news documentary programs such as 20/20 and Dateline. In
fact, these programs have aired follow-up stories recently. While each situation of genetic mix-up occured in different countries with different racial politics, what unites them is the media attention paid recently to
the "horrors of new reproductive technologies". The coverage of these cases reveals the "psychological turmoil" of paying for the expensive treatments only to find out the clinic mistakenly implanted DNA from black subjects.
In each interview, the white couple confesses they were afraid something would go wrong when they saw a black couple at the clinic for treatment as well. The fear of "racial contamination" which prevades these stories is
important to consider, it harkens back to 18-19th Century scientific racist rhetoric which warned against the bi-racial child as an genetic anonmly. The transnational nature of these cases is also important to note - each
occured in different contexts yet the rhetoric used to describe them is the same. This makes a statement about the global flow of information and political rhetoric.
Since these events are so recent, there is no academic scholarship available yet. There are important links to be made between these IVF mix-ups and surrogacy arrangements where a non-white woman is paid to
gestate and birth a white child for a white couple. While the in-vitro cases mainly involve white women birthing babies of colour, surrogacy cases are applicable because they provide a starting point to think about the
implication of cross-racial births, ownership of genetic material and the politics of parenting, which ultimately comes down to DNA. Much has been written about the use of non-white surrogate bodies, and the body labour
done by these women. Angela Davis ("Outcast Mothers and Surrogates: Racism and Reproductive Politics in the Nineties") and April Cherry ("Nurturing in the Service of White Culture": Racial Subordination, Gestational Surrogacy,
and the Ideology of Motherhood") liken non-white surrogates to "mammies" because they do mother-work but have no legal rights to the white children they care for. It is an interesting contrast to look at these IVF cases
where the white couples have held the majority of legal rights to children not entirely genetically their own. Here, I use Cheryl Harris' "Whiteness as Property" to explain how white privilege becomes associated with
ownership and selfhood.
Ultimately, this presentation looks at the rhetoric of racial, biological and genetic primacy that determines parentage as well as how discourses of race are being reinterpreted in light of new reproductive technology cases.
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