Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard
Date and Time
Location
Governing Reproductive Technologies in Times of Conflict: Emerging Developments in Contemporary Israel
Speaker
- Gal Dafadi, PhD Candidate in Anthropology, Brandeis University.
Chair
- Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies; Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Committee on Degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Contact
Tenzin Dadak
tdadak@hks.harvard.edu
Abstract
Current developments in reproductive biology in Israel raise a host of new ethical, social, and legal questions. For instance, following the October 7 attacks and the subsequent war, a policy change allowing posthumous reproduction led hundreds of families of fallen soldiers to retrieve gametes from their deceased sons. In another development, groundbreaking research pushed the boundaries of reproduction in 2023 when scientists at Israel's Weizmann Institute succeeded in cultivating a 14-day human embryo model in the laboratory from stem cells. These recent advances, which may enable individuals to overcome biological constraints such as age, health, physical condition, and biological sex, disrupt traditional understandings of reproduction and challenge entrenched social norms.
Drawing on the co-production framework and examining these two contemporary examples, I ask: How do legal and ethical frameworks shape these developments? How do socio-political discourses surrounding biological reproduction, abortion, gender, and prenatal rights – particularly within Israel's pronatalist context during a time of ongoing war – influence how people conceptualize, create, and model future life through emerging technologies? And how do conceptions of personhood embedded in law and public policy, particularly those informed by Jewish traditions, shape the ethical boundaries of reproduction today?