Moving away from Franklin’s original 2016 concept of ‘repronationalism’, this chapter conceptualises repronationalism as bureaucratic programmes aimed at surveilling and controlling human reproduction, especially of already marginalised bodies (namely, Muslims and Christians). After providing a brief historical overview, the chapter analyses Ved Garbh Vihar (VGV), a non-biomedical programme, based on Ayurvedic principles, thriving alongside a biomedical reproductive industry of assisted reproduction and commercial gestational surrogacy since the early 2000s in Gujarat, the Hindutva laboratory of India. VGV is a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS-right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organisation) run biopolitical-ethno-religious-repronational project claiming to produce perfect progeny for the perfect nation. A close reading of English-language print media articles, and Twitter and Facebook pages of VGV reveals an inconsistent narrative with some articles mocking the programme and others endorsing it through detailing success stories of prodigious children born. Most tweets draw upon the mother-as-god and mother-as-nation metaphors valorising biological motherhood. The Facebook posts demonstrate a metaphorical imagination to validate Ayurveda as science, claiming the inherent eugenic ideals within Ayurveda. The chapter concludes that VGV produces not just babies, but reproduces neo-eugenic ideals creating a potential ‘Made in India babies’ industry towards the larger project of Hindutva nation building.

This chapter explores the contested vocabularies used to name and conceptualise birth violence across a range of geopolitical contexts. Using a transnational feminist approach, it argues that a tendency towards geopolitical bifurcation (rooted in racist and colonial historical legacies) frames the ways in which researchers have approached and conceptualised birth violence in different settings. As a result of this bifurcation, separate literatures and vocabularies have developed, which frame the issue of birth violence in distinctive ways depending on geopolitical zones. The conceptual usefulness of the term ‘obstetric violence’ is thus considered as an alternative, unifying, and transnational vocabulary. However, the limitations of this conceptual lexicon are also discussed, particularly in relation to the ability of the framework to theorise (and address) the multiple modalities of violation that potentially occur during pregnancy, labour and birth.

Two articles in the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights are of particular relevance to the issue of assisted reproductive technology in the global south, and in South Africa especially. Article 8 mentions respect for human vulnerability, while article 10 calls for equality, justice and equity. In this chapter, these two articles will be brought into conversation with the issue of assisted reproductive technologies in the global south, taking the South African context as the point of departure. The articles underscore the necessity for vulnerable groups and individuals to be protected in the application and advancement of scientific knowledge, medical practice and associated technologies, while also emphasising that all human beings should be treated in a just and equitable manner. In the context of South Africa, where the majority of the population are unable to access and afford most forms of assisted reproductive technology, the issues of biopower and misuse of power come particularly to the fore. Especially in forms of biotechnology where donor material is utilised, donors often come from vulnerable groups, while those that benefit are in positions of privilege, where they can both access and afford these treatments. This also raises the issue of intersectionality in the ethical discussion on assisted reproductive technologies in the South African context.

Regulation of populations has been one of the central concerns of nation states since the latter half of the eighteenth century, when disciplinary power over individual bodies shifted to power over populations, in what Foucault termed biopower. Depending on the biopolitical objectives of indiviudal nation states, this resulted in the promotion of pro- and anti-natalist measures as part of a capitalist, racist, and imperialist agenda. Over time, the biopolitical project of eliminating bodies deemed superfluous to the economy moved from ‘making die’ to ‘letting die’. However, this chapter argues that the active promotion of anti-natal technologies, such as long-acting injectable contraceptives, which are inherently hazardous and life-threatening, indicates the reverse, from ‘letting die’ to ‘making die’. Evidence comes from the three-decade long struggle in India against the introduction of injectable contraceptives into its national family planning programme. The chapter analyses the context within which the struggle gained currency and in which it lost out. It examines the truth claims of the medical establishment, the NGO-isation and conflation of diverse ideologies under the rubric of ‘women’s’ groups as strategies deployed to overcome resistance to these technologies of power. In the context of liberal democracy, the removal of certain populations’ rights and their elimination makes the state of exception the new normal. The chapter concludes that, notwithstanding the rhetoric of reproductive choice and women’s empowerment, the discourse demonstrates the class, gender, and caste dimensions (with its underpinning of racism) of the biopolitical intention of ‘making die’, ably aided by transnational capital.

South Africa is the site of a professionalised market for human oocytes in the context of assisted reproductive technology and, as such, is part of the rapidly growing transnational fertility industry. This chapter explores the biopolitical dimension of the South African market for ‘donor eggs’ by putting it into the larger frame of ‘technologically assisted’, global politics of reproduction. Based on an analysis of a rich corpus of ethnographic data, the chapter argues that Foucauldian biopolitics are reshaped as they operate on different levels within this specific economy of egg donation – linking genetics, biocitizenship, and geopolitics. In doing so, the chapter highlights new forms of eugenics that are emerging in the global business around fertility-related services, eugenics that come in the positive frame of choice. It stresses the importance of paying attention to both continuities and changes regarding eugenics as the reproduction of existing hierarchies – even more so against the background of a postcolonial history of racialised population control and reproductive injustices.

India is an egg donation ‘hot spot’, which relies on some of the country’s poorest women to source its gametes – yet it remains legally unregulated. Given that egg donors’ experiences rely on the discretion of fertility clinics, it is imperative to analyse the meso-micro interactions between clinic institutions and low-income women. This chapter analyses how commercial egg donation is organised in unregulated fertility markets, such as Kolkata, India, and what the implications are on donors’ wellbeing. Harnessing in-depth interviews and participant observation at a fertility clinic in Kolkata, it unpacks the theoretical potentiality of agency bound by financial desperation, unequal gendered positions, and institutional imposition. In doing so, it illuminates how clinics structure a donor market incentivising low-income women while also strategically distancing themselves from these networks of women. This neglect from the clinic has severe consequences for the wellbeing and safety of donors, which in turn compromises their ownership over their bodily labour. It argues that greater institutional accountability for clinics is fundamental to recentring donors’ agency. Overall, the chapter reinforces a need for contextual specificity to develop meaningful discourses about women’s bodily labour in the global south.

This chapter investigates how genomic practices can reinforce population thinking beyond the lab, looking particularly at how social divisions are essentialised as biological categories in India. The case chosen is the media discourse surrounding DNA recovered from skeletons belonging to the Indus Valley Civilisation, a sophisticated urban civilisation that flourished in the North West of the Indian Subcontinent between 3300 and 1300 BCE. Debates in the Indian media revolve around the question of indigeneity and the idea of an unbroken lineage of Hindus versus invaders and colonisers. These theorisations of a genetic re-inscription of population groups are bolstered by archaeological evidence and linguistic theories, which have historically resulted in politically charged debates. Through an analysis of 31 articles published in seven Indian newspapers and magazines, the chapter examines ways in which genetic evidence has been mobilised to argue for either an ‘Aryan Migration Theory’ or an indigenous Vedic culture while normatively classifying populations as ‘indigenous’, ‘Aryan’, ‘Dravidian’, ‘upper-caste’, among others. It argues that the popularisation of biomedical ideas of race poses potentially dangerous consequences for India, as ancient DNA testing is used to make arguments against those who ‘do not belong’ and as justification for various forms of political repression.

Despite the Human Genome Project in 2000 discovering that there is no hereditary distinction between races, the naturalised bio-centric conception of race continues to pervade society. One such area where this happens is during the egg donation process, which is a part of the growing industry of assisted reproductive technologies. This chapter argues that the role race plays in the egg donor selection process is central. Both recipients and donor agents employ racial categories in order to find an egg donor that racially matches the patient, which is the phenomenon of racial-matching. This phenomenon, the chapter argues, is a process of neo-eugenics. Whilst many think of ‘better birth’ at the mention of the term eugenics, this chapter makes the argument that racial matching mimics eugenic practices of maintaining the myth of racial purity. Donor agents speak of an ‘obviousness’ of the use of racial categories, naturalising race as biological and seemingly legitimising hegemonic notions of the family. The egg donor selection process conceals the power dynamics it perpetuates in the discourse of resemblance. Assisted reproductive technologies have brought treatment and hope to those struggling with infertility and indicate the advancement of science and technology within the health sector. However, the persisting power dynamics surrounding race and desirability have come to manifest themselves within these technologies, indicating that as time changes, the discourse within medicine and science shifts itself to accommodate the politics of the time.