Governing Through Precarity: The Experience of Infertile Bodies in IVF Treatment in Ukraine

Abstract

 Despite the large amount of research accumulated on the subject of assisted reproductive technologies in different cultural and political settings, the implementation of ART in Ukraine was left without deserved attention. However, this sphere requires investigation due to the social and theoretical problems at its heart. Firstly, Ukraine’s recently emerging market of commercial infertility services is rapidly developing, becoming a target of transnational fertility travel and challenging the procreative imagery of society. Secondly, there is little reporting on the local, lived experiences of how infertile women negotiate the gendered discursive practices of assisted conception in Ukraine. In this article I will examine how the subjectivities of infertile women undergoing IVF procedures are constructed in discourses about ART in Ukraine and which power rationalities are involved in production of these subjectivities.