| This qualitative study explores the way infertility is constructed in documents produced by Serono, the top pharmaceutical company that markets reproductive technologies to couples with problems conceiving (www.serono-canada.ca). From a critical realist perspective, the study draws on feminist bioethics and social constructionism as theoretical models. Content analysis was used to examine patient brochures, a magazine supplement and a website. The major themes that emerged from this analysis are: Construction of Infertility, Infertility and Medical Treatment, and the Technologization of Infertility. The documents pose infertility as a problem deserving medical treatment by suggesting that biological birth is normal and natural, and that factors that thwart that process are abnormal and dysfunctional. Implicit is a subtle social agenda that 'normal' heterosexual partnerships require the ability to produce biological children. Given this dynamic, infertility deserves a medical cure. This cure is then linked to the development of New Reproductive Technologies. |
