Full Description
In the early 1980s the new reproductive technologies available supposedly offered infertile women a chance to have children. However, there was growing concern that the determination of scientists to dominate nature, their disregard for women's well-being, and the financial gains to be made from these technologies would together result in the increased modification of all women's lives and the loss of even more control over our own bodies.
Originally published in 1985, the essays in Man-Made Women describe the technologies being used and researched in the areas of in vitro fertilization ('test-tube babies'), sex-predetermination and embryo transfer at the time. They discuss the practical application of the technologies on an international scale and draw attention to the racist and classist assumptions on which they are based. There is also information about the international action that feminists had begun to counter these so-called benevolent and therapeutic technologies.
Man-Made Women hoped to encourage women to start questioning the 'miracle' of these new reproductive technologies and to become involved in crucial decisions about their bodies and their lives.
Contents
Notes on Contributors. Preface Janice Raymond 1. Prenatal and Preconception Sex Choice Technologies: A Path to Femicide? Helen B. Holmes and Betty B. Hoskins 2. The Continuing Deficit of Women in India and the Impact of Amniocentesis Madhu Kishwar 3. The Reproductive Brothel Gena Corea 4. Sex Choice: Survival and Sisterhood Roberta Steinbacher and Helen B. Holmes 5. What's 'New' about the 'New' Reproductive Technologies? Renate Duelli Klein 6. Motherhood, Patriarchal Power, Alienation and the Issue of 'Choice' in Sex Preselection Robyn Rowland 7. Transforming Consciousness: Women and the New Reproductive Technologies Jalna Hanmer.
