Assistant Professor Marisa Almeida Araújo1
1Lusíada University
The twenty-first century is still offering – old and new – forms for inequalities and exclusion. Complex issues arise from biotechnologies, in particular from Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) that, in many cases, can create new systems of exploitation and alienation and new clauses to “the sexual contract”. The called “repronationalism” underlines how biotechnology is part of a country’s national identity, shaped (also) through reproductive policies. From the testimony of several demographic transitions or the increase of diversity in family formation, we have now a new interpretation of “family” outside its traditional concept and related to (Michel Foucault’s) biopower. The new biotechnological solutions are changing the way people understand fertility, parenthood, reproduction, and, at the end, family. However, if the reproductive autonomy is enhanced on one side on the other, the spread of reproductive technologies and transactions in reproductive services, especially across borders, can reproduce capitalist relations of production as “racialized” gendered relations, as Vora and Iygar state. Gender disparities are increased or, at least, social inequalities are perpetuated and ultimately is a major obstacle for women to gain full access to their (human) rights. The aim of this work is to analyse the legal-ethical issues raised by ART and the new forms of “bio colonialism” that causes imbalanced power relations, considering the differences between the “buyers” and “sellers”, based on race, cast, ethnicity or class, and politic-economic asymmetries. Long-standing gender and racial challenges remain undermining human rights and, in many cases, creating a true «social death» (using Orlando Patterson’s expression).
Biography:
Marisa Almeida Araújo helds a position of Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law of the Lusiada University (Porto, Portugal) and Member of its School Council, Researcher at CEJEA, the Centre for Legal, Economic and Environmental Studies of said University, where she investigates mainly on Human Rights, Ethics, Health Law, International Law and Civil Law.
She is also a Fully Qualified Lawyer and Legal Consultant, Arbitrator and Member of the Justice Council of Associação de Futebol do Porto.