Legitimate or Not? The Economic Value of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) Services in an Emerging Local/Cross-Border Fertility Market in Taiwan

• In Event: Capitalizing Fertility: Feminist STS Approaches to Reproductive Bioeconomies - II

Abstract

Along with the institutionalization and standardization of the assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), our current period witnesses an emerging transnational ARTs market. ARTs have been widely applied in the clinical setting and touched on several controversies, arising from the market exchange of human gametes, the outsourcing of human wombs, the genetic selection of embryo before implantation, and the preservation of gametes or embryos for future use. Through following the controversies, this research adopts Fourcade and Healy’s (2007) approach of “moralized market” to examine the development of the ARTs and the changing moral landscape of the emerging local/cross-border fertility market in Taiwan. Based on secondary source data and in-depth interviews with medical practitioners, including physicians, embryologists, and consultants from three types of medical organizations that can legally provide ARTs services, I argue that the moral orders of “what is legitimate” and the economic value of ARTs services originate from the market-making process, which also determines how a market has been structured and arranged. In addition, medical practitioners from three types of medical organizations, including public hospital, private hospital, and private clinic, are confronted with different contradictions and difficulties regarding their day-to-day practices and interactions with service users. Through practicing their own cultural and logistic work, various moral logics have been classified, valued, contested, and reconciled by medical practitioners in arenas where there are institutional and organizational limitations on the expansion of the market. The materiality of the ARTs has also shaped the social organization of the current market.

Author

• Wen-Ling Kung, State University of New York, at Albany