Tag: Reproductive Technologies

What Makes An Egg Collapse?: Infrastructures of Egg Freezing

Beste İrem Köse November 6, 2026
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“I am not really emotionally ready for children, but this is on my mind on repeat: Biologically speaking, your eggs are collapsing, your eggs are collapsing.” I heard this from Dicle, a migrant lawyer in her late twenties, during our in-depth interview in central Frankfurt. I understood two years later what was puzzling me about her exact wording. What did it mean, exactly, for an egg to collapse? The way she expressed it in our native language, Turkish, was yumurtaların çöküyor. Collapsing eggs was the fitting translation, but it still seemed strange. The Turkish verb çökmek is rather literal. A building could collapse; a bridge could collapse. But how does an egg collapse? (read more...)

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“Is This the End of Disability?”: Eugenics and the Technification of Normalization

Cristian Gustavo Gutiérrez Pinzón June 3, 2026
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New reproductive and bodily intervention biotechnologies not only promise to cure or prevent diseases, but are also shaping a new regime of bodily normalization that redefines which lives are desirable, correctable, or eliminable. For several years, countries such as Iceland have stood out for medical procedures that identify the conditions under which a fetus is developing and then ask parents whether they wish to continue or terminate the pregnancy. Between 80–85% of pregnant women in Iceland undergo prenatal screening and, when the result is positive for trisomy 21, termination rates approach 100%. In Denmark the percentage is 98%, in France 77%, and in the United States 67%. Geneticist Kari Stefansson, founder of deCODE Genetics, stated: “My understanding is, basically, that we have almost eradicated Down syndrome from our society; there will hardly ever again be a child with Down syndrome in Iceland” (Quijano, 2017). (read more...)

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