Babies or cellular tissues? Kinship and Individuation of the Cryopreserved Embryo among Users and Actors of In Vitro Fertilization in Mexico City

Abstract

Based on a Mexico City ethnographic study involving medical personnel at assistedreproduction clinics as well as both male and female in-vitro fertilization users, the study explores the framework of relationships surrounding cryogenically-preserved and vitrified embryos. It postulates that by creating morally and legally unclassifiable life-forms, biotechnologies upset the equilibrium within preexisting categories as they give rise to others. It explains how legal, religious and political frameworks that were considered valid in Mexico between 2015-17 determined that products of those technologies could be considered “unborn” or “conceived” “children” or “babies,” among other names. The fertilized ovule therefore appears both in discourse and in spoken language under terms that evoke subjective and relational aspects. The embryo’s final end (i.e., its conservation, donation to scientific research, adoption or discard) not only depends on its recognition under one of those terms, but as well —as studies (Giraud, 2014; Collard and Kashmeri, 2009 Cromer, 2018) carried out in other countries posit— other parameters such as age, sex, financial circumstances and parent/owner health also intervene. The present study goes on to suggest that embryos’ place in genealogy as well as parents’/owners’ previous experience in IVF cycles are definitive factors in the personification of the embryo and of establishing parenting bonds with it.