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Anthropological Challenges Raised by New Reproductive Technologies

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Discuss some of the anthropological challenges raised by the introduction of NRT’s (New Reproductive Technologies).

In the world we live today, technology plays a very important role in the construction of our society. By the means of new technologies, new theories, ideologies and perspectives are being applied to understand social phenomena. Society has gone, and is still going through a new revolution, because technology has changed the way we look at different sectors in our lives, such as in the way we communicate, social institutions, different jobs and so on. In this assignment, I am going to write about new reproductive technologies and the impacts these leave regarding the family unit, as such technologies can change the …show more content…

On the other hand, in for example China, sperm donation is less accepted than egg donation as they believe mostly in patriarchal values and patrilineage continuity. Such acceptance can also be influenced by cultural constructions of gender. This can be seen, according to Haimes (1993), in Britain and the United States, where egg donation is seen as asexual and altruistic, such that Becker (2000) argues that because of this, a family member might be accepted to be the egg donor. On the other hand sperm donation is seen as sexualized, and in this case having sperm donating from a family member is not so encouraged. (Levine; 2008; 381-383)
Couples undergoing such reproduction technologies, or those parents who have already did, would rather keep things secret. It is very common that parents would hide the fact that they’ve gone under these procedures, such that some won’t even tell their whole family, and not even the children born by these reproduction systems. In vitro fertilization, which is one of the less technologies being debated, is still being concealed by some people as in certain cases it uses the parents genetics, but they still hide it because it is considered unorthodox and could designate the child. (Modell 1989) IVF as time goes by is getting used to by people, but many still argue against the fact that donor insemination by an outsider

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