Making Babies and Citizens: Reproductive Technologies and Citizenship in Poland

Contradictory views on biotechnological innovations regarding reproduction, which circulate in contemporary societies, involve the negotiation of rights and terms of belonging, as well as the formation of new political subjects. This chapter examines the ways in which rights claims and subject positions related to reproduction are discursively constructed in the debates on reproductive technologies in contemporary Poland. The aim is to contribute to theoretical debates on citizenship as embodied experience shaped by biomedical progress, drawing on discourses and practices emerging in the post-socialist context. Specifically, I examine the Polish discussion on infertility and in vitro fertilization (IVF) mapping the dynamics of reproductive citizenship within a conservative social environment, characterized by a strong opposition to women’s reproductive rights and new biomedical technologies in the sphere of reproduction (see also Just 2008; Kulawik 2011; Radkowska-Walkowicz 2012, 2015). The specific questions concern how the involuntarily childless construct and negotiate their citizenship status and how institutional actors opposing the use of reproductive technologies (re)construct discourses on citizenship in relation to infertility and IVF.