Stine Willum Adrian

Sperm stories: Policies and practices of sperm banking in Denmark and Sweden

In Denmark and Sweden sperm donation is the most debated and contested of the reproductive technologies that are currently in use. Although the two countries are neighbouring welfare states with public healthcare in common, policies and practices of sperm banking and sperm donation differ strongly. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores how the sperm used for donor insemination is narrated, chosen, produced and consumed at sperm banks in Denmark and Sweden.The analysis illustrates that marginalization and stigmatization of infertile men, donors, single women, lesbians and donor children not only takes place in the media and during debates in the Danish and Swedish parliaments where the technology has historically been contested, but also at the sperm banks and fertility clinics. This article therefore calls for more inclusive stories on sperm donation to be narrated.

Sperm on Ice: Fatherhood and Life after Death

Abstract Freezing technologies and extraction techniques make posthumous reproduction possible. This article discusses the bioethical and legal debates that surround the possession and use of dead mens sperm as they unfold in three select cases in Denmark and Australia. In the analysis we use feminist perspectives on reproduction to argue that the debates frame posthumous reproduction in light of four discursive configurations: The ‘child’, the ‘father’, the ‘widow’, and the ‘necrophile’. Whereas the performance of responsibility and maturity is key in the production of the ‘good’ widow in the Australian legal cases, the monstrous figure of the necrophile takes on a more prominent place in the Danish bioethical material. The legal and bioethical debates jointly, however, resurrect the nuclear, patriarchal family, while they also tend to re-naturalise heterosexed, romantic reproductive desire.

Passport to Parenthood: Reproductive Pathways In and Out of Denmark

Abstract Denmark has become a destination for single women, lesbians, and heterosexual couples wanting donated sperm. At the moment, women from Sweden, Norway, Germany, Italy, and the UK travel to Denmark. Simultaneously, waiting lists for donated eggs and age restrictions are prime motivations for infertile Danish women and heterosexual couples to leave Denmark and travel to Spain, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine, and Greece for egg donation. Informed by Donna Haraway’s notion of “the apparatus of bodily production”, Marcia Inhorn’s development of “reproductive flows”, and the use of Adele Clarke’s “situational analysis”, this paper explores the question: How do global reproductive pathways in and out of Denmark emerge when fertility travellers narrate, negotiate, and cross national borders to go through fertility treatment? Methodologically, we use a multi-sited and multi-modal approach centring on interviews with fertility travellers moving to and from Denmark in combination with ethnographic observations carried out in Danish and Spanish fertility clinics and an analysis of legal regulations. The paper concludes by discussing how the concept of reproductive pathways helps to theorize transnational movements of bodies and contributes to feminist scholarship on transnational reproductive travel.

Psychological IVF: conceptualizing emotional choreography in a fertility clinic

During ethnographic fieldwork at a fertility clinic in Denmark, I became intrigued by emotions. In particular, I found an incidence labelled ‘psychological IVF’ theoretically provocative as it challenged my views on materializations, which I was preparing to study. This paper centres on the story of psychological IVF, and I use this narrative to consider emotions and materialization methodologically. I also ask how emotions at fertility clinics can be conceptualized to enable analysis of their materialization, change, and effects. In order to do so, I develop the term ‘emotional choreography’. This theoretical work has three aims. First, it seeks to illustrate how the story of psychological IVF offers a rich range of materializations of emotions. Secondly, this work proposes a feminist materialist conceptualization of emotions that is both non-representational and posthuman. This conceptualization draws upon Thompsons notion of ontological choreography and Barads theory of agential realism, extending these concepts to develop the notion of emotional choreography. Finally, this paper aims to contribute to current discussions regarding (new) materialisms within feminist theory, underscoring the conceptual importance of the feminist legacy.