Saturday, March 15, 2014
Congressional A (Omni Shoreham)
The sustained demand for cross-border reproductive health care options by prospective European parents is amply evidenced in research backed by the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and other health care monitoring organizations. The successful ‘entrenchment’ of cross-border contracting for reproductive services can indicate the failure of population policies and fertility regimes aimed at reversing the chronically low replacement birth rates of nations and the region at large. Amidst responses to these crises, the European Commission has invited expert investigations into the micro-level reproductive decision making behaviours of EU citizens, presumably to aid in the optimization of macro-level population policies. Yet, maintaining access to these health care options sits at an awkward nexus between the potentially contentious aims of predictive population policies and protections for the fundamental rights of all European citizens. The inclusion of individual reproductive decisionmaking within such regional agendas as the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has the potential to transform contemporary discourses on the meaning of justice, family privacy and citizenship away from historic norms. In this review of cross-border reproduction trends and policies, I explore the re-animation of discourses on the regional citizenship responsibilities involved in maintaining access to cross-border reproductive decision making. Specifically, I reconsider the needs for maintaining gender equity and notions of family privacy amidst macro-analyses of knowledges obtained through the proliferation in parental contracting for advanced reproductive technologies.
