ROUNDTABLES - IV REPROMOB CONFERENCE
REPROMOB Roundtable Subproject 1
Reproductive travel: patients’ experience, medical evidence, and global markets
Roundtable organizers::
Marcin Smietana. Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia (Italy) / University of Cambridge (UK).
marcin.smietana@unive.it
ms935@cam.ac.uk
Diana Marre. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain).
diana.marre@uab.cat
Roundtable description:
Reproductive travel, also theorised as ‘cross-border reproductive care’ (Gurtin and Inhorn 2011), ‘reproductive exile’ (Inhorn 2015) and ‘reproductive journey’ (Desy and Marre 2014), has become an increasingly common path to family formation. In particular, it is undertaken by those people who cannot access fertility treatments where they live, whether due to legal and social discrimination, financial limitations or other reasons. However, reproductive travel is framed by both travellers’ socio-economic status and the broader global bio-economies that reproductive labourers are part of (Smietana, Thompson and Twine 2018).
At this plenary roundtable, leading experts in the field will look at the multifaceted nature of reproductive travel, encompassing its personal, medical, and economic dimensions. Giulia Zanini will shed light on the personal journeys of those seeking reproductive treatments abroad. Juan José Espinos will discuss the scientific and clinical aspects of transnational fertility treatments. And Lucy van de Wiel will unpack the economic structures and processes underlying the increasingly globalised reproductive industry.
Some of the questions this roundtable will tackle are: Can reproductive treatment really work if patients come to the destination country or city only for a short stay? What barriers do fertility patients and professionals come across in more liberal contexts, such as Spain or the UK, and in more restrictive ones, such as Italy? Given that, inevitably, reproductive travel can be undertaken only by people of a certain socio-economic status, are there ways to increase accessibility of fertility treatments for all? Some states prohibit the use of certain reproductive technologies within their jurisdictions, and some go as far as to ban their citizens from reproductive travel – what can health professionals and researchers say to this: is any international consensus possible on what medicine considers as a valid fertility treatment or will it always depend on local cultural norms? Furthermore, a growing number of fertility clinics belong to global chains – what does it mean for clinics in Spain, the UK and other places? Can patients trust clinics owned by global fertility chains, and private clinics in general? Might economic interests be placed over medical ones in some cases? What impact can patient groups, regulators or entities such as the Spanish Fertility Society have?
Participants:
Giulia Zanini (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia)
Juan José Espinós Gómez (Hospital de la Santa Creu y Sant Pau / Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Lucy van de Wiel (King’s College London)
Chair: Marcin Smietana (Università C’ Foscari Venezia / University of Cambridge)
Languages
English, Spanish, Catalan (simultaneous translation will be provided)
Bios
Giulia Zanini is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council-funded project ‘PregDaT: Pregnancy Dating Challenges: Technologies and Unequal Geographies of Abortion and Childbirth Care’. The project explores the sociotechnical and political components of pregnancy and reproductive time by focusing on the process of gestational age assessment in four different European countries. She obtained a PhD in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute (EUI) and received a Piscopia-Marie Curie Fellowship and worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Padua (Italy), the University of the Aegean (Greece), the University of Barcelona (Spain) and Queen Mary University of London (UK). She has worked on assisted reproduction, childlessness and transnational conception and abortion travels.
Juan José Espinós Gómez is a Senior Consultant in Reproductive Endocrinology at the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. He has been President of the Spanish Fertility Society (SEF) since 2022. He is an Associate Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where he coordinates the Obstetrics and Gynecology course. He is also Co-Director of the Master’s Degree in Human Reproductive Medicine at the same university. Dr. Espinós trained in Medicine at the Universitat de Barcelona and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, with stays in the United States: at the Saint Barnabas Medical Center (New Jersey) and the New York University Fertility Center (New York).
Lucy van de Wiel is a Lecturer and Postgraduate Research Director in Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. She has founded and is chair of the Reproduction Research Cluster at King’s. Her research focuses on the introduction of new reproductive technologies such as egg freezing, IVF, and embryo selection. She explores how these technologies give insight into broader developments within the sector, including the datafication of reproduction and the financialisation of fertility. She also researches telemedical abortion in the post-Roe landscape. She has published an Open Access monograph on egg freezing with New York University Press titled Freezing Fertility: Oocyte Cryopreservation and the Gender Politics of Aging. Freezing Fertility has inspired a feature documentary of the same title produced by VPRO Backlight.
Roundtable REPROMOB subproject 2
Activists and Researchers in Action! Working Together Towards Global Access to Safe Abortion
Roundtable organizers:
Silvia De Zordo, Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Barcelona (España).
silviadezordo@ub.edu
Eleonora Cirant, Università di Milano-Bicocca (Italia)
e.cirant@campus.unimib.it
Natalie Psaila Stabile, University of Malta (Malta)
natalie.psaila.02@um.edu.mt
Roundtable description
Limited access to safe abortion care is a phenomenon that is seen across all countries, particularly those with very restrictive legislations on abortion, including a complete blanket ban. Abortion laws play an important role in shaping reproductive decisions and practices, going beyond the legal. They can affect medical practices, media messaging, social interactions, and contribute to the stigmatization of abortion, including in contexts where abortion is legal. Over the last decades, feminist activists have been operating in a range of restrictive environments to de-stigmatise abortion and ensure efficient and safe access for those who need it, mainly by using on-line platforms to disseminate information and providing self-managed medication abortion at home via telehealth, or by supporting people who decide to travel abroad, in case the abortion they need is illegal there, while accompanying them emotionally and helping them contrast stigma.
This roundtable brings together activists from different organizations to discuss the specific strategies they employ to counteract the legal and social barriers encountered by women and pregnant people seeking abortion in different legal contexts, more or less restrictive, in Europe and Latin America. We will also debate how criminalization, legalization and medicalization impact people’s access to information on different abortion methods, to the methods themselves and to the facilities providing abortion services, where they exist. Finally, we will discuss how activists and academic scholars work together to contribute to the transnational struggle for granting access to safe abortion across the world.
Participants:
Sílvia Aldavert (L’associació Drets Sexuals i Reproductius, Catalunya); Lady Alba Bermúdez (Oriéntame, Colombia); Eleonora Cirant (Prochoice, Italia); Verónica Fernández Montes (Women on Web); Patricia Parreira (Women Help Women); Isabel Stabile (Doctors for Choice Malta).
Languages
English, Spanish, Catalan (simultaneous translation will be provided)
Bios
Elvia Ladis Alba Bermúdez
Social worker specializing in health promotion and human development. She holds a PMP certification in project management and a master’s degree in gender-based violence prevention. She has extensive experience with developing sexual and reproductive health strategies and managing projects for improving access to legal abortion, and supporting migrant women and young people in accessing sexual and reproductive health services. She has held leadership positions at the Oriéntame Foundation, promoting initiatives for adolescent pregnancy prevention and sexual and reproductive rights, implementing innovative telemedicine abortion services in Colombia, and developing technical guides for care.
Sílvia Aldavert
Director of l’Associació de Drets Sexuals i Reproductius, political scientist specialized in the generation of public policies on gender and Sexual and Reproductive Rights. She has been the winner of the ASPASIA Award for her career in favour of gender equality and the guarantee of women’s Human Rights. During more than 20 years of associative life she has published multiple articles and is the author of documents and reports that have contributed to the improvement of public policies on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, especially on the Right to Abortion. The last one in 2024 IMAGINARIES REVEALED. Towards a new legal, practical and social framework on abortion rights
Documentalist at the UnioneFemminile Nazionale, freelance journalist and doctoral candidate in anthropology (Milano-Bicocca University). She works on gender history, preservation and enhancement of documentary cultural heritage, sexual and reproductive rights, and prevention of gender-based violence. She is a member of the steering committee of Aidos-Associazione Italia Donne per lo Sviluppo and is among the founders of Pro-choice, the Italian abortion and contraception network. She has been working on abortion since 2005 and is part of the research team of the Repromob2 project.
Operations Manager at Women on Web, she holds an MSc in Global Health from Karolinska Institute. With a strong background in the health care sector, her professional and volunteer efforts have taken her across various countries in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. She has been actively engaged in advocating for sexual and reproductive health and rights, playing a key role in coordinating Women on Web’s services and projects for over 10 years.
An abortion activist with Women Help Women for 10 years, Patricia holds a degree in Anthropology, a post-graduation in Human Ecology, and another in Women’s Studies, all from Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
She is currently engaged as full Professor at the University of Malta. She has been at the forefront of innovations in medical education in the UK and the US, where she worked for 20 years. Prof. Stabile is the author of over 80 publications in the peer-reviewed literature, including seven books. Her teaching and research experience have led to invitations to serve as referee for major journals in her field. Professor Stabile is also an activist with Doctors for Choice, the only openly pro-choice gynaecologist in Malta, a mother of four adults, and now also a grandmother of three.