‘Our Family Picture is a Little Hint of Heaven’: Race, Religion and Selective Reproduction in US ‘Embryo Adoption’

People use selective reproductive technologies (SRT) in various family-making practices to assist with decisions about which children should be born. The practice of ‘embryo adoption’, a form of embryo donation developed by white American evangelical Christians in the late 1990s, is a novel site for reconceptualizing SRT and examining how they function among users. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2008 and 2018 on US ‘embryo adoption’, this study provides an anthropological analysis of media produced by and about one white evangelical couple\u27s race-specific preferences for embryos from donors of colour. This article shows how racializing processes and religious beliefs function as mutually reinforcing SRT for some ‘embryo adoption’ participants. Evangelical convictions justify racialized preferences, and racializing processes within and beyond the church reinforce religious acts. Race-specific preferences for embryos among white evangelicals promote selective decision-making not for particular kinds of children, a current focus in studies of SRT, but for particular kinds of families. This study expands the framework of SRT to include selection for wanted family forms and technologies beyond biomedical techniques, such as social technologies like racial constructs and religious convictions. Broadly, this article encourages greater attention to religion within analyses about race and reproduction by revealing how they are deeply entwined with Christianity, especially in the USA. Wherever constructions of race and religious convictions co-exist with selective reproductive decision-making, scholars should consider race, reproduction and religion as inextricable, rather than distinct, domains of analysis

Saving: Stem Cell Science, Christian Adoption, and Frozen Embryo Potential in the United States

This dissertation examines the controversial fates of frozen human embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures and frozen for future in the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century. Stem cell researchers covet human embryos as wellsprings of biovalue for curing human diseases and generating new forms of wealth. At the same time, pro-life Christians target excess embryos for rescue as adoptable orphans and mobilize the frozen unborn within legal strategies to redefine personhood. As a comparative ethnography, this dissertation reveals what these putatively opposing solutions share in common by examining why and how frozen reproductive remainders are saved. Based on twenty-seven months of ethnographic field research in California following the global financial crisis (2008-2013), this dissertation draws from in-depth interviews, document analysis, and participant observation in two organizations on the vanguard of managing frozen biological assets: a Christian embryo adoption program and a university stem cell tissue bank. Both solutions for America’s embryo surplus agree about what makes embryos valuable, which is their potential. This dissertation develops saving as a theoretical framework for examining the processes through which frozen IVF embryo potential is produced and valued. First, the lens of saving gives voice to evangelical Christians, IVF patients, and stem cell scientists, whose perspectives offer a revision to scholarly understandings about the growing connections between the life sciences and finance capital. Perspectives from American embryo savers illuminate how the opposing missions of stem cell researchers and Christian adopters belie common efforts within financial crises that transform frozen forms of capital—like reproductive remainders—from devalued trash into potent treasure. Additionally, the saving framework illuminates that stem cell tissue bankers and embryo adoption proponents share a commitment to “doing good” today on behalf of a better tomorrow. On the one hand, stem cell researchers strive to adhere to and model the principles of “good science,” at the heart of which are responsibilities to not be wasteful. Embryo adoption proponents, on the other hand, strive to live according to Christian values of equality, dignity, and duty by modeling social forms of inclusion through “good family.” This dissertation contributes to knowledge about the politics of regenerating value when “life” is in surplus and provides insight into political formations that cohere around saving when futures are felt to be uncertain

Saving embryos in stem cell science and embryo adoption

The million frozen human embryos accumulated in IVF clinic freezers across the United States have become premier targets for saving by groups committed to repurposing reproductive remainders. Based on twenty-seven months (2008–2013) of ethnographic research within a Christian embryo adoption program and an embryo biobank for stem cell research, this article examines the motivations and practices involved in transforming leftover IVF embryos from a remaindered to a repurposed state. A focus on saving illuminates how moral discourses, economic logics, and biomedical issues conspire in shaping futures as well as modes of care in the present. Embryo repurposing programs use similar saving practices for different reasons, assume responsibility for repurposing IVF embryos, and strive to transform them into revalued forms for new futures. Fluctuating factors beyond the cryopreservation tank multiply rather than stabilize embryo potential. As a dynamic, open-ended process, saving requires programs to adjust strategies over time and wait