Fertility preservation: technologies in search of users

Abstract

This dissertation chronicles the rise of fertility preservation, an emerging subfield of medicine and a part of a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Fertility preservation is marketed to people who anticipate infertility due to a variety of risks such as fertility impairing cancer treatments and other gonadotoxic medical treatments, aging, occupational hazards, and medical transition of transgender body. This dissertation maps the changing, expanding market of fertility preservation technologies with a focus on cancer patients, aging women and men, and transgender individuals. The dissertation discusses the historical and cultural contexts in which these developments occurred.

The dissertation captures a cultural snapshot of fertility preservation in the United States in order to unpack the social and political undertakings that underlie it. Technological innovation and medical practices change the gendered meanings, as well as the technological and conceptual practices of reproduction. The possibility of preserving one’s fertility has transformed the experience of reproductive selfhood for many. Engaging in reproductive preservation brings into being a particular, though in no ways certain, understanding of one’s reproductive future, and in addition, preserves their ability to make such a decision in the future when the time is right.

Based upon a multi-sited ethnographic research that involved participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis, this dissertation contributes to several theoretical discussions within the disciplines of science and technology studies and anthropology: “biomedicalization” and the “anthropology of potentiality.” The dissertation uses the concept of “cryopolitics” in identifying the various political, ethical and temporal challenges in the practices of fertility preservation.

The research for this dissertation focused on three different user groups that differ in terms life stage, the circumstances that lead them to fertility preservation technologies, media coverage, and public perceptions of the validity of their use. Due to the nature of their differences, levels of social acceptance, and public responses, the professional treatment and experiences may not be same for the members of each group. Clearly, how society values the reproduction and family formation of different members of diverse social groups influences the care they receive.