Assisted Reproductive Technologies Summary

Article Critique:
RETHINKING RADICAL POLITICS IN CONTEXT OF ASSISTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGYAllison TaylorIntroduction to Sociology (Section 8) Iowa Lakes Community College
Summary In this article Jennifer Parks brought up three radical feminists; Shulamith Firestone, Gena Corea and Janice Raymond, and their views. Starting with Firestone, who believed that there was another class division (sex class), and spoke of how woman's roles have been largely influenced by the male dominant culture. Shulamith Firestone understood that assisted reproductive technology could be a way for the masculine capitalist system to have further control over females, however she remained positive and was quoted saying “We shall assume flexibility and good intentions in those working out the change” (22). Firestone believed that this technology could open may doors that will liberate woman, making them
Jennifer Parks addresses the question of what constitutes a radical feminist position on assisted reproductive technology and argues that the debate over whether ART liberates or oppresses women is misguided, and that instead the issue should be understood dialectically. Jennifer Parks explains that reproductive technologies are neither inherently liberating nor entirely oppressive: rather, we can only understand the potential and effects by considering how they are actually taken up within a culture. Parks demonstrates the internal contradictions, tensions, and inconsistencies within ART and the way it is addressed within the law points to a dialectic that resists a simple reductivist understanding. The author explained that the dialectical nature of ART produces two contradictory images of what families are an can be: on one hand, it promotes a family not bound by what society rules as traditional and