Controversies surrounding (bio)medical assistance to reproduction: at the intersection between Sociology of Health and Social Studies of Science and Technology

May 12

Amphitheater 4.1 (2pm-4:30pm)

Controversies surrounding (bio)medical assistance to reproduction: at the intersection between Sociology of Health and Social Studies of Science and Technology

Catarina Delaunay

Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences (CICS.NOVA - NOVA FCSH), Lisbon

Synopsis:

This conference intends to reflect on some of the sociotechnical controversies raised by the process of biomedicalization of human reproduction, highlighting the epistemological contribution of Sociology of Health and Social Studies of Science and Technology. To this end, it starts with the results of two research projects, already completed, around the use of medically assisted procreation techniques (PMA) for the implementation of parenting projects (including homoparenthood and solo motherhood). The object of research involved, in one case, the public controversies, tensions and personal constraints associated with the need to resort to gamete donors (oocytes and/or spermatozoa) in the course of PMA procedures and, in another, the multiplicity of statutes and associated meanings to the human embryo created in a laboratory context, both on the part of the beneficiaries and the professionals working in the area, and how they are constructed, circulate and evolve even for the same person.

Several dimensions of the process of designing and implementing these projects will be addressed, from the problematization of the theme, with the definition of the starting questions/problems and the respective theoretical-conceptual framework, to the more operational issues such as the elaboration of the methodological protocol ( including ethical and methodological issues of sociological health research), as well as some of the results and conclusions of the two studies.