Extending Fertility? Imagining and Regulating the Future of Reproduction in Switzerland

Since the eighties, the demographic trend to delay first childbirth characterising European countries and bringing them below the replacement level of the population has been an object of increased concern and debates. Developing in parallel, assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) stand in an ambiguous relationship with this trend, being in turn blamed for encouraging it, and praised for the new solutions to age-related infertility they promise to bring. In this presentation, I will examine how the possibility of medically extending fertility is imagined and regulated in Switzerland. I will focus on the debates around two technologies, which can potentially allow women to have children later in life: egg donation and egg freezing. The first one is currently prohibited in Switzerland and a growing number of perimenopausal women turn to egg donation abroad to have a child. The second one was recently introduced in a few clinics, but is still controversial and challenges the legal regulation of reproductive medicine centred on pathology as legitimising access to ARTs. Drawing on fieldwork research including interviews with medical experts, I will examine how the future of medically assisted reproduction in Switzerland and especially the possibility of extending fertility, are discussed. Firstly, I will characterize the regime of cautiousness framing the possible transformations of the regulation towards egg donation and egg freezing. I will especially highlight its specific temporality and the ways in which future and past are brought into the present in the debates. Secondly, I will examine how the distinction between normal and pathological, which is at the core of the legal regulation, is challenged and discussed. I will show how the possibility of extending fertility destabilises the “nature” of age limits and how the possible transformation of reproductive medicine into “anti-aging” medicine is negotiated by medical experts.