Controversies and beliefs around the cryopreserved embryos in Argentina
My background
As a teacher of Social Work, the transformations in families have always been a focus of my research. To properly understand families in Argentina in the last decades, Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) need to be considered. I have been studying ART users’ experiences involving family and reproductive transformations, both from an academic perspective (as part of a Ph.D. in gender studies) and as an activist on sexual and reproductive rights.
Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the religious frame
In this research, the religious frame and the users’ «moral agency» -following Rayna Rapp (1999)- are central to understanding complex and unusual treatment decisions.
The complexity of decision-making for users with a religious frame is directly related to the fact that sexual and reproductive rights are disputed territory in Argentina. Religious and conservative organizations are key actors in policy-making debates. As I studied during my postdoc, ART and the ideas around in vitro embryos are a controversial matter without legal regulation.
After thirty years of private practice, ART regulation in Argentina underwent a critical transformation by enacting the Law on Medically Assisted Reproduction (2013) and the reform of the Civil and Commercial Code (2015). The new legal scenario democratized access to ART and recognized this filiation source. It also changed the heteronormative frame for understanding ART, which centered on infertility, framing it instead as a sexual and reproductive right.
Despite these advances, Argentina has a legal vacuum around the in vitro embryo. Several bills to regulate the in vitro embryo have been dismissed. This controversy arises from a diversity of interpretations about the entity of the human embryo, rooted in different, sometimes irreconcilable conceptions of life, the human person, and family. In addition, this tension is also fostered by a Catholic colonial heritage, which, far from disappearing with the secularizing processes of the country, persists in a diversity of political, organizational, political, and normative dimensions in processes of transformation and tension.
The critical moment in this dilemma arises when ART users want to decide to end the cryopreservation of the embryo’s destiny in Argentina, we find an essential limit. Discarding in vitro embryos is not permitted but also not forbidden by law. Given this legal vacuum, many Argentinian clinics do not discard embryos. As a result, there are a suspected 40000 cryopreserved embryos, half of them without any reproductive end.
Positions concerning these embryos, especially those without reproductive end, are controversial. For example, conservative organizations consider them «abandoned embryos» by their «parents.» On the other hand, ART users’ cannot come to a decision without a concrete legal and ethical frame. In practice, medical and non-medical experts resolve these controversies from their particular, personal, cultural, or institutional positions and beliefs.
Key research questions
Regarding this conundrum, my key research questions are ¿Which are the positions, discussions, and beliefs regarding cryopreserved embryos in Argentinian health policy? Second, ¿Who are the main actors involved in the decisions about the cryopreserved embryos in Argentina?
My research seeks to understand ART controversies in Argentina regarding cryopreserved embryo decision-making. It also aims to analyze the interpretative frameworks regarding reproduction in Argentina’s ART policy experts.
It also seeks to understand how different decision-makers build interpretations and practices around these embryos in this context of legal uncertainty. Analyzing these positions on the in vitro embryo is a valuable input to improve health and sexual policy planning, building into a more comprehensive policy on ART in Argentina.
Methodology
My analysis is based on a socio-linguistic analysis of discourse through the study of documental and oral sources, applying a qualitative methodology design and an interpretive paradigm. In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with professionals in clinics and the justice system, with a snowball sampling. From these sources, discursive arguments will be gathered, together with the practical decisions and professional strategies to cover the needs left by this legal vacuum.
Preliminary Findings: «Can a person be frozen?»
At this stage in my research, I have found that attorneys, psychologists, and social workers in judicial and ART clinical institutions develop strategies to resolve this complex situation instead of being paralyzed by the lack of legislation. Decisions are very much informed by each region’s political, religious, and social scenario, which leads clinics and judicial operators to make -sometimes contradictory- decisions.
I will continue my research, focusing on the discourses and practices of those professionals attending the effects of this legal vacuum and the consequences of these decisions for sexual and reproductive rights. Imaginaries, analogies, and beliefs about the embryo are powerful tools in these experts’ practices, as illustrated by the title of this subsection, «Can a person be frozen?», which was used by a judge in a sentence concerning cryopreservation of embryos.
Science Religion and Health 