Abstract:

Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) are hailed as "the gospel" to infertile patients in mainstream narrative. The existing literature mostly adopts the perspective of technology and social interaction, and often views the restrictions and constraints of social and cultural contexts on ARTs from a static and macroscopic perspective, ignoring the recipients of the technologies, especially the experience of women. This paper regards embodiment as the methodological orientation. It opposes both social and cultural determinism and biological determinism. Instead, it emphasizes the biological and experiential nature of the body while linking it to the external context, thus frees itself from the dilemma of bio-cultural dualism. It also avoids the neglect of social situations and the indifference to physical creativity and variability. Based on the investigation in Z hospital's reproductive center, the paper shows the three moral pressures of infertility, assisted reproduction and national policy faced by infertile patients, and the uncertainty of ARTs puts them in a more intense world of anxiety and hope. That is to say, ARTs in practice are far from simple "hope technology", instead, they throw women into the paradoxical world where hope and anxiety coexist. As embodied experience, anxiety and hope are transmitted through the body of women, which show the inscription of social-cultural context and technical uncertainty on the female body; meanwhile, women actively learn strategies to cope with the technical uncertainty and moral pressure from local culture (including recuperating the body, folk religion, etc.), so as to hold on infertility treatment with hope.

Key words: in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer, embodiment, embodied experience, assisted reproductive technologies