Markets, Cultures, and the Politics of Value: The Case of Assisted Reproductive Technology

Abstract

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) is a global market engaging a variety of local moral economies where the construction of the demand–supply relationship takes different forms through the operation of the politics of value. This paper analyzes how the market–culture relationship works in different settings, showing how power and resources determine what value will, or will not, accrue from that relationship. A commodity’s potential economic value can only be realized through the operation of the market if its cultural status is seen to be legitimate. At the same time, local moral economies and their associated social orders are potentially susceptible to the destabilizing implications of new commodities. The formal or informal organization of power relationships in the market–culture interaction can enable potential value to become manifest and tangible over time or block its path. The interaction is steered through national institutional sources of cultural authority embedded in state and religion, where the visible contest in the politics of value is conducted. Increasingly, that interaction finds its expression in transnational institutions of governance where the struggle for control of the cultural agenda reflects the global nature of the ART market.

Moral considerations on infertility and artificial reproductive technics

“…Motherhood is deconstructed from unified biological and social entity into a plethora of genetic, birth, adoptive, and surrogate maternities each with its own ART commodity, or sets of commodities, designed to enable its realization.” (Salter, 2022, p. 13)…”

“…Furthermore, Lones (2016, p. 26) notices that due to the lack of external criteria to balance their moral compass, a growing number of people operates with “default values” – that is, flexible values that minimize the tension between spiritual beliefs, emotional preference, cultural and relational pressure. Thus, the unbridled desire of the adults operating within the relativistic and utilitarian ethical systems offers the cultural milieu for the flourishing of ART industry of “child production” regardless their marital status, age and sexual orientation (Salter, 2022). Once this “industry” was accepted, the intimate life of the spouses, the birth of children as a “divine gift” in the context of the loving relationship consecrated by the marriage covenant, the dignity of human being from conception to natural death and the sanctity of life were replaced with the moral values of the market economy, and with the promises of the new technologies and their laboratory products – sperm, eggs and embryos.…”

“…“[…] embraces a variety of techniques and products that naturally activate important values concerning the status of the physical components of the body involved in reproductions (gametes, embryo, womb) and the social structures involved in reproduction (family, marriage, motherhood, fatherhood, inheritance, preferred gender of the child.” (Salter, 2022, p. 5)…”

“…If the market is oversaturated with frozen embryos, they can be destroyed like any other worthless commodity or obsolete commodity (O’Donovan, 1984, p. 39). In the same vein, Salter (2022) notices that there is a global market of assisted reproductive technology (ART) with an ART demand–supply chain of estimated profitable value of US$21bn and a growth rate of 10% in 2017 (Salter, 2022).…”

Age-discriminated IVF Access and Evidence-based Ageism: Is There a Better Way?

“…Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and practices have garnered much attention in Science and Technology Studies (STS) generally, and this journal specifically, as they catalyze several fraught intersections of technoscience and values. As Salter (2021) notes in a study of local and global moral economies governing these technologies and practices, these economies may "find their cultural values translated into institutional rule form or they may not" and "[e]ven where state institutions provide rule frameworks, these may be challenged by unresolved cultural tensions in society and the changing balance of power between competing ART interests" (p. 12). It is very much in this spirit and at the intersection of cultural values and rule frameworks that we approach questions concerning age, subfertility, and access to (fertility) treatment in this article.…”