Landscapes of Conception

By Miranda Almy, Visiting Scholar, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Summer 2023.

This project explores the Legal and Literary Landscapes of Reproduction in the United States.

Over recent decades, ideas of motherhood have transformed alongside the proliferation of reproductive and fetal technologies that have expanded our understanding of and access to parenthood. From the first theory of biological conception to the advancement of Artificial Reproductive Technologies (ART), human reproduction and our understanding of it have continued to evolve, generating and regenerating questions about the legality and morality of different medical acts. We have seen through recent legal developments the ways in which legal landscapes shape our access to forms of reproduction. Thus, from June to August 2023, I have compiled legislation on both federal and state levels regarding the current landscape of reproduction within the US. The research I have undertaken presents a snapshot of a cultural moment in which fertility, pregnancy, and parenthood exist in a state of flux as our culture assigns medical, political, and ethical meaning to the rapid changes of both the biological state of childbearing and the technological means by which we understand and enact control over it.

Working Group: Motherhood & Technology.