Reproductive Tech

Barnard College is hosting a conference on reproductive technologies on Saturday, February 28th; I wish I were there, but I’m not. Hopefully someone will go & report back!

All the info below the break.


“The Politics of Reproduction” will focus on the global social, economic and political repercussions of new forms of reproduction, including assisted reproductive technology (ART) and transnational adoption.
These new technologies have created a “baby business” that is largely unregulated and that raises a number of important social and ethical questions.Do these new technologies place women and children at risk?

Should there be limits on how reproductive technologies are used? How should we respond ethically to the ability of these technologies to test for genetic illnesses? And how can we ensure that marginalized individuals, for example, people with disabilities, women of color, and low-income women, have equal access to these new technologies and adoption practices?

The conference will feature numerous experts in the field of reproductive rights, including:

Debora Spar is president of Barnard College and author of The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception.

Rebecca Young is assistant professor of women’s studies at Barnard College and author of Sex, Hormones and Hardwiring: Re-thinking the Theory of Brain Organization (forthcoming).

Dana-Ain Davis is associate professor of urban studies at Queens College and author of Battered Black Women and Welfare Reform.

David Eng is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy and Racial Castration:Managing Masculinity in Asian America.