Abstract
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Reproductive technologies and services have impinged profoundly on the
relations between—and constitution of—individuals, groups, and nations.
This has occurred amid the uncertainties arising in an industry in which
human beings and human emotion are both the “means of production” and
the intended final product. As the human reproduction industry expands, we
increasingly need to think of it in a regional and global frame. Globalization
is “a process of intensifying global social inter-relatedness, whereby space
and time are compressed and previously separated locations [are] brought
into a new proximity” (Eschle 2002, 316).1 Technologies such as gamete or
embryo freezing and ease of air travel mean that reproductive relations are no
longer (if they ever were) “domestic,” either in the sense of the family home
or of the home country (Franklin 2013, 271).