Reproductive cycle, political cycle.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Follow-Up

In "Breeder Reactionaries" (December 1994), free market feminist Wendy McElroy criticized "the 'feminist' war on reproductive technologies," including innovations in birth control methods and refinements of in vitro fertilization techniques. McElroy cited University of Massachusetts women's studies professor Janice Raymond, whose 1994 book Women As Wombs "disparages the technologies as 'reproductive abuse,' a product of the 'spermatic economy of sex and breeding' or 'spermocracy,' and 'medicalized pornography.'"

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Control over women's reproductive lives is again front and center in American politics, although much of the furor this time comes from the right. Republican presidential hopefuls have inveighed against emergency contraception, want to investigate what happens to embryos left over from in vitro fertilization treatments, oppose prenatal testing, and support attempts to legally protect fertilized human eggs as "persons."

But some left-wing feminists are still in the business of limiting women's choices. In October 2011, researchers at the New York Stem Cell Foundation Laboratory announced a possible step toward producing transplant tissues based on a new form of research cloning using human eggs. The eggs had been legally purchased, but feminist bioethicist Marcy Darnovsky, noting in a press release that the practice was banned...