Beyond IVF: Eugenics and Reproductive Biotechnology
Jennifer DenbowAccess to in vitro fertilization (IVF) has emerged as a crucial issue in the 2024 election. While the Republican Party Platform claims support for access to IVF, many backers of Donald Trump and Project 2025 have pushed for restrictions on IVF. The Republican-backed Life at Conception Act would declare that an embryo is a human being from “the moment of fertilization.” If it passes, it would endanger IVF treatments across the country. As Senator, Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance voted against the opposing Right to IVF Act. In contrast, Kamala Harris has committed to access to IVF.
While IVF should absolutely be legally protected, politicians and public commentators should not flatten discussions of reproductive biotechnology as a simple choice between access and restriction. What is missing from this debate is the complex terrain that prospective parents have to navigate regarding reproductive genetic technologies. Over the past 25 years, biotechnology companies have rapidly developed a range of reproductive technologies, from non-invasive prenatal testing to polygenic embryo screening. Companies and researchers claim that other genetic detection, selection, and editing tools are on the horizon. Many of these technologies would be used alongside IVF and raise an important question: should they be described as eugenic?
Debates over this question reflect a conflict over the meaning of eugenics, and what it means to describe a contemporary technology in this way. Using insights from disability justice scholar and activist Marta Russell, I argue that we should understand reprogenetics – and the economic structure that underpins it – in light of the legacy of eugenics. Russell draws our attention to the capitalist, ableist context within which people make reproductive decisions, complicating the claim that choice is equivalent to freedom.
Neoliberal Eugenics
The early twentieth-century eugenic movement sought to “improve” the genetic stock of humanity through encouraging the reproduction of those eugenicists deemed “fit” and preventing the reproduction of the “unfit” through practices like coercive sterilization. Supporters of new and emerging reproductive biotechnologies tend to downplay the link to eugenics, arguing that, in contrast to eugenics, the state is not coercing anyone into using these technologies, which are often referred to as reprogenetic technologies. Critics, however, highlight how eugenic logic pervades many aspects of the development of biotechnology. They also underscore the potential for reproductive technologies to be used for the eugenic purpose of reducing the population of those considered genetically inferior.
I use the term “neoliberal eugenics” to draw attention to the particular structural and political economic factors that shape the reproductive options people face today. One crucial structural factor is the poor social safety net, especially the lack of support for raising children with disabilities. In her 1998 work Beyond Ramps, Russell argued that prospective parents are pressured into bringing only “healthy” children into the world because of the abdication of public responsibility to care for disabled children. In her discussion of the “politics of perfect babies,” Russell advocated for public health care and disability support systems. In the absence of such systems, she argued that “we are guilty of a subtle eugenics policy that forces expectant parents into abortion through the absence of our tax dollars.”[1]
While this focus on how welfare state retrenchment shapes how people make reproductive decisions is crucial, it is also important to attend to another outcome of neoliberalism: the rise of financialized capitalism, or the vast increase in the size of the financial sector compared to other sectors of the economy. As part of this system, private investors wield undue influence over which projects and entities receive funding in US society. In the realm of biotechnology, an elite set of investors have outsized influence over which technologies are developed, and ultimately which reproductive technologies prospective parents may be asked to choose from.
Since Russell’s arguments about the “politics of perfect babies,” developments in reproductive biotechnologies – underpinned by private investment – have only amplified eugenic concerns. Through the proliferation of technologies such as preconception screening of prospective parents and pre-implantation genetic screening of embryos, the reproductive biotechnology industry subtly promotes eugenic ideas about “fitness” and “good genes.” Some of these novel screening technologies produce unreliable results and are based on shaky science, yet there is little if any regulatory oversight of this burgeoning industry. This means that biotechnology companies have been able to market products aggressively, using tactics from the pharmaceutical industry, even when their marketing is misleading or inaccurate.[2]
I have written about the political economy of prenatal screening, and, with Tamara Lea Spira, about a novel form of genetic screening of embryos.[3] One key insight from this work is that private finance, not the public or even medical professionals, drives the development and uptake of emerging reproductive technologies. In my book, Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype, I explore how private investments underpin the biotechnology fertility industry’s recent boom.[4] The goals and interests of financialized capitalism determine which biotechnology projects are understood as worthwhile innovations and therefore receive funding. This process is oriented around profit seeking, not reproductive “freedom.” By providing crucial early funding for reproductive biotechnology endeavors, investors shape how the field develops and which products are pursued.
One emerging technology that illustrates this dynamic is in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), or the making of eggs and sperm from stem cells. At least three new startups are attempting to develop IVG. If successful, IVG would lead to a virtually unlimited supply of embryos. As journalist Antonio Regalado has explained, “because [IVG] could turn eggs into a manufactured resource, it could supercharge the path to designer children.” One IVG company has acknowledged that IVG could enable “wide-scale genomic selection and editing in embryos.” The startups trying to develop IVG in humans have received substantial private investments in recent years. IVG startup Gameto, for example, “has raised $40 million from leading venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.” Scholars report that these IVG startups are staking out their intellectual property claims.[5] Although activists and scholars have raised serious ethical and social concerns about IVG, private investments fuel its development with the expectation that it will be profitable.
From Choice to Justice
This focus on political economy and structural injustice exemplifies Russell’s critique of capitalism and attention to the link between eugenics and political economy. While Russell does not equate selective abortion with Nazi euthanasia or forced sterilization, she does see utility in using the term “eugenics” to describe the context in which people make reproductive decisions. Russell’s view, then, is that understanding the legacy of eugenics – and what it means for contemporary politics – requires consideration of social policy and political economic conditions. That is because policies and economic conditions can exert pressure on individuals’ reproductive decisions. Of particular concern is the link between early twentieth-century eugenicists’ economic concerns and the persistent belief that disabled people are drains on the economy. This leads to policies that provide insufficient support for disabled children and adults. Russell, then, rejects a simple dichotomy between eugenics and choice.
I am not interested in condemning or constraining individual reproductive choices. Instead, I follow Russell in interrogating the structural conditions that shape which choices we have and influence how we make reproductive choices. Russell’s thinking echoes the reproductive justice framework, which originated with the political organizing of Black women in response to racist state policies such as welfare “reform” and involuntary sterilization. As Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger explain, a reproductive justice analysis of the history of reproductive control reveals that “individual choices have only been as capacious and empowering as the resources any woman can turn to in her community.”[6]
These views provide a guide for navigating the complex terrain of reproductive technologies and options on the horizon. Emphasizing social policy and political economy can help the public more deeply understand recent technological developments and their effects on reproductive rights. Given the rapid growth of the biotechnology industry as well as the rise in eugenic rhetoric in the United States and elsewhere, this is a crucial moment to turn to Russell’s work and assess the legacy of eugenics. While Russell links contemporary policies and structures that exert pressure on people to make certain reproductive choices to the history of eugenics, she is also careful not to conflate them.[7]
Russell also calls us to place capitalism at the center of discussions about how policy shapes who is born and whose lives are valued. The state may never mandate the use of reproductive genetic technologies, but the biotechnology industry may push prospective parents to choose its reprogenetic technologies, shaping the population for the sake of financial profit. This means that the eugenic potential of new and emerging reprogenetic technologies cannot be dismissed by saying that no one will be forced by the state to use them. In fact, after World War II, eugenicists themselves shifted their rhetoric and practice away from state coercion and toward encouraging individual, voluntary decisions to “improve” the gene pool.[8]
Ignoring the link between genetic biotechnologies and eugenics risks obscuring what is at stake in debates over new technologies. As disability justice and reproductive justice work show us, focusing exclusively on individual choices obscures the policies and political economic structures that shape and influence those choices. Instead, we must attend to how a narrow swath of humanity has had undue influence on the development and commercialization of reprogenetic technologies. This is imperative because when prospective parents use IVF, they will be asked to navigate this new technological terrain. In conjunction with protecting access to IVF, we must also seek to wrest control over the future of reprogenetic technology from the financial sector.
Notes
- Marta Russell, Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract : A Warning from an Uppity Crip (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1998), 50. ↑
- Kelly Holloway, Fiona Alice Miller, and Nicole Simms, “Industry, Experts and the Role of the ‘Invisible College’ in the Dissemination of Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing in the US,” Social Science & Medicine 270 (February 1, 2021): 113635, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113635. ↑
- Jennifer M. Denbow, “Prenatal Nondiscrimination Laws: Disability, Social Conservatism, and the Political Economy of Genetic Screening,” Disability Studies Quarterly 40, no. 4 (December 7, 2020), https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v40i4.7124; Jennifer Denbow and Tamara Lea Spira, “Shared Futures or Financialized Futures: Polygenic Screening, Reproductive Justice, and the Radical Charge of Collective Care,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 49, no. 1 (2023). ↑
- Jennifer Denbow, Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024). ↑
- David Cyranoski, Jorge L. Contreras, and Victoria T. Carrington, “Intellectual Property and Assisted Reproductive Technology,” Nature Biotechnology 41, no. 1 (January 2023): 14–20, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01592-9. ↑
- Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger, Reproductive Justice: An Introduction (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1525/j.ctv1wxsth, 16. ↑
- Marta Russell, Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract : A Warning from an Uppity Crip (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1998), 50. ↑
- Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America, Second edition., American Crossroads 17 (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2016). ↑
Featured image caption: A newly fertilized human egg. (Courtesy Wellcome Collection)
Jennifer Denbow is Professor of Political Science at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. She is a scholar of contemporary US reproductive politics, technology, and justice. Her second book, Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype, will be published in November 2024 by Duke University Press.
