DOSIFICACIONES DE LAS PASTAS Y DE LOS MORTEROS

Chapter 2 is a review of scholarship focused on ARTs

investigating themes relevant to my own research. I discuss several works that explore patients’ difficulties with adapting to their limited capacity to conceive, as well as to the treatment aimed at surpassing involuntary childlessness. I then focus on women as the main actors

undergoing infertility treatment, responsible not only for complying with medical requirements and protocols, but also with gendered

expectations of being ‘dedicated’ to the cause, without crossing a threshold of moderation. Turning to the issue of assisted reproduction with third parties, I discuss people’s experiences with ova provision and surrogacy both in terms of their exploitative powers, and as a framework for questioning the meanings of ‘gift’, ‘commodity’, and ‘altruism’. I then present the role of genetics, class, and race in the reproduction of bodies and social status, and the perpetuation of ‘stratified reproduction’ on a national and especially global scale. The final part of this chapter is concerned with matters of ensuring accountability through governance, or, in other words, devising legislation and institutional arrangements that cater to the interests of all those involved with reproductive services and which reduce the possibility of harm to a minimum.

Chapter 3 explores methodological issues, starting with my choice of a feminist and STS methodology, and continuing with why

ethnography was the most appropriate approach towards my research. I then elaborate on my experiences with gaining access to participants, and the problems I encountered in that respect, which have had an important impact on how I eventually framed my thesis. Further, I present my choice of methods - interviewing, observation, and

documentary analysis - before finally ending with clarifications regarding the data analysis and writing up phases. Ethical considerations will be addressed throughout the chapter, since these were deeply intertwined with all other stages of my research and could not be clearly delineated from them.

The data chapters are organised according to three different settings centred around different ova provision practices, illustrating through juxtaposition the multiple ways in which these were enacted and comprehended. Thus, I do not tackle these settings and practices as reified, but focus on how people engaged in materialising them and giving them meaning, and in so doing created that identity construction and deconstruction dynamic. I contrast the ease with which boundaries were discursively created with the difficulties that many people found in trying to fit these boundaries in practice, despite efforts to do so. I

illustrate that it was not only patients’ and providers’ identities that were easily contested, but that all stakeholders had to constantly perform in order to gain legitimacy in their actions.

Chapter 4 focuses on the Global ART and Sabyc ova

commercialisation cases that have brought ova provision into public attention and assigned it to the realm of criminality. I analyse the means through which the media and the prosecutor investigating one of the cases interpreted the events, and constructed the identities of ova providers. I pay attention to the specific apparatuses used by the media and the prosecutor in approaching the ova commercialisation cases, and their importance in framing this practice as a ‘threat’ to Romanian

society, and ova providers as ambivalent victims-criminals. I also address the fact that it was not only those involved in commercialising ova that were analysed by the media and the prosecutor, but that these in turn, especially the prosecutor, also underwent a process of (self-)evaluation, in which their own practices were put under question by other participants. This chapter thus answers the first three research questions of my research: it presents some of the practices involved in commercialised ova provision, and it gives an account both of who the ova providers were, and how their identities, together with that of others, were constructed during the police investigation.

While chapter 4 concentrates around practices seen as belonging to the criminal sphere, chapter 5 explores the intricacies of legislating.

Here, I follow the consequences of the ova commercialisation cases, illustrating how these led to the creation of the official ova provision regime, but also how they largely affected all initiatives of replacing this regime with an alternative one. I analyse how various actors – politicians, activists, medical professionals, administrative personnel – engaged with and evaluated each other. Despite all the efforts of passing as reliable and responsible partners in the legislating effort, I argue that the projected identities of these actors were contested in the process, affecting the chances of consensus building and democratic

consultations. Ova providers emerge once again as the absentees in the process of legal definition - a matter I address in terms of power

differentials, the power of ‘being called’ and the limitations of public

consultations. In terms of my research questions, this chapter presents the practices legally accepted as part of ova provision, and it brings to the fore the identity dynamics of those involved in governance, offering an understanding for how these dynamics affected decision-making at a state level.

Chapter 6 brings readers closer to the practices of IVF patients and ova providers, narrated by these actors themselves. Their accounts highlight the limitations of the official ova provision regime, as well as the shortcomings of ‘trafficking’ as a lens for analysing ova

commercialisation. I follow their efforts of encountering each other and reaching exchange agreements, again exploring the performances each party presented or was expected to employ in order to be deemed acceptable or desirable. The monetised relationships between patients and providers is underscored as a major reason for which these groups could not engage in consultations regarding the desired ova provision regime, despite being the ones who were primarily impacted by it. The regime is also shown to having stratified infertile patients according to class, with those without financial possibilities risking not being able to find a willing provider, while those better-off becoming cross-border patients. Thus, chapter 6 completes the picture of the practices of ova provision in Romania, giving a more complex and balanced account of ova providers’ identity, and an additional explanation for why they could not effect a change of the official ova provision regime by participating in governance.

Finally, the concluding chapter (7) draws together all previous chapters. Here, I offer a final, comprehensive picture of the official ova provision regime in Romania and the boundaries that it has enacted.

However, I argue that the partiality of its vision offers the possibility of contesting enactments of ova provision to emerge. I therefore emphasise the fact that any understanding of ova provision must take into account its multiple manifestations in space, time and as part of different

relationship entanglements. I argue that ova provision is characterised by ambiguity, to which the ‘trafficking’ framework has contributed.

Consequently, I examine the identity dynamics that lead to polarised identities amongst those engaging with ova provision, highlighting its

exclusionary character. I identify these dynamics, together with other power differentials, as being responsible for the absence of ova providers from public consultations, as well as for the failure of contestation agencies to change the official regime. Throughout the chapter I end by offering a few avenues for future inquiry.

The conclusion also offers a clearer picture of the contribution that my research has made to existing scholarship and which I will only

briefly mention here. Firstly, this thesis is the first to offer such a detailed insight into Romanian ova provision, countering the image of Romania simply as a ‘supplier’ of gametes, and instead pointing to its complex role on the international assisted reproductive scene. Secondly, I have

employed an STS perspective which has allowed me to analyse ova provision not as a practice already well-defined and imbued with

meaning, but as a phenomenon constantly in the making. Ova provision emerges out of my research as a practice multiple in its manifestations and understandings, dependent on the apparatus used for its

comprehension. In relation to this point comes a third, which refers to the fact that I have combined the perspectives of a diversity of actors in order to grasp the complexity of ova provision. While a substantial number of other studies focus on a limited type of participants (e.g.

patients, or ova providers, or medical professionals), I brought together the views and experiences of all those that have a say in shaping this practice in the Romanian context. Fourth, in order to analyse why some perspectives on ova provision have been more persistent than others, I have placed the concept of ‘identity’ at the centre of my research.

Although many authors refer to participants’ identities – especially that related to gender, class and/or race, few analyse them in their dynamic existence, as they are constructed and challenged. In my work, the enactment of identities is seen as deeply entwined with that of ova

provision, and their constant making and unmaking are diffractions of the power dynamics at play. Finally, a fifth point regards my use of the

concept of identity as a means to counteract the limited explanatory ability of ‘regimes’, for reasons explained earlier. All of these points will be addressed in more length in the final chapter of this work.

Chapter 2 - Literature review