Population Control and the New Reproductive Technologies

The Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (FINNRAGE) will hold its 1988 conference in Bangladesh in an attempt to draw as many of its participants as" possible from the third world.

The need for such activity is spelled out in the following extract from a document produced by the network:

"The rise of the modern contraceptive technologies is very much linked with the theories of population "explosion " bringing the era of population control. The reduction of the number of population of the third world, especially of the poor and the powerless, is the explicit objective of the population control agencies. As a consequence third world women are being subjected to the coercion of their respective state agencies. The population control policies target the women of the third world quite directly. They are often the receiving and of unsafe and harmful contraceptive methods.

Multinational companies, as the producer of contraceptives, have wielded profitable alliance with the population planners around the world and have been successfully exploiting every opportunity to dump their products upon the population of the third world countries. The conference will be an opportunity for many third world women to share their experiences in this light".

"On the other hand, in the developed countries, women are increasingly becoming the victims of various reproductive technologies and practices of biogenetic engineering. These include abuses of women by such new technologies as in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer, embryo flushing, sex predetermination, prenatal diagnosis and the so-called surrogate motherhood. The new reproductive technologies, as they are called, are offered to infertile women. But these technologies are not confined to the use in the infertile. The coercive nature of these technologies has already been exposed and criticised by women in many countries. Women are organising to resist these technologies.

"FINNRAGE as a global network of women has always contemplated to understand the common origin of different technologies aimed at women. Even in their contradictory appearance in the developed and underdeveloped countries as pro-fertility and anti-fertility devices or methods, the contraceptive and reproductive technologies should not be seen as remotely unconnected. Both are aimed at the uterus and its reproductive power. This common target has brought the women of the developed and the underdeveloped countries to a single platform to discuss the issues related to their bodies and their lives.

"Therefore, the Dhaka conference will be an excellent forum for discussion. Different aspects for the contraceptive and reproductive technologies will be critically discussed and a strategy for future action will be formulated.

"The most significant aspect of the conference is that for the first time a conference of such a nature is going to be held in a developing country like Bangladesh. So far, the participants from developing countries have been attending the conferences held in the developing nations. The theme, tone and trend of discussions were usually around the realities of developed nations. When women from the developing nations spoke about the situation of poverty and other forms of economic and social oppression faced by them the intensity of her experience got lost in that environment of discussion. It was always very difficult for the western participants to grasp the gravity of the problems faced by women in these regions. The western friends have always been sympathetic to the problems faced by the women in the developing countries, but yet a gap always remained in their perception. The Dhaka Conference will attempt consciously to bridge this gap...''