(Bio)political Games: Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Belarus

Article

Abstract

[In Russian]

The market of assisted reproductive technologies has shaped Belarus since the mid 90s within the commercial medicine, closely intertwining with the main priorities of the state policy in the field of reproductive health, family and demographic policy. In the public space assisted reproductive technologies are not purely medical phenomenon, but are endowed with a variety of social values that are called to support well-defined models of reproduction. In the article on the bases of analysis of regulatory documents and newspaper articles there presented a study of the discursive regulations of reproduction by the example of assisted reproductive technologies. The example of the assisted reproductive technologies shows how medical technology is used in bio politics to maintain the dominant discourse of family and demography that is oriented at the well-defined models of social organization. In this case the focus shifts from providing opportunities for choice to providing the opportunity to meet the «norm», which is defined as «collateral» for the existence of «the nation».