Múltiples maternidades y la insoportable levedad de la paternidad en reproducción humana asistida

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to explain how maternity and paternity are constructed by a group of petitioners, donors and customers of assisted reproductive techniques. The main point concerns the basic principles of our Western kinship system, where consanguinity and filiations are interlinked. This ideology become difficult to face in assisted human reproduction when the donation of gametes takes place. These are not just mere tools, but donation and reception of gametes implied confusion, ambiguity and tension. Maternity and paternity are then fragmented, multiplied and divided into hierarchies. Practices and speeches contradict each other; they become paradoxical and full of discrepancies and silences. All this has an impact on those who demand assisted reproductive services and on those professionals implicated.