Reproductive technologies and the quality of offspring in Asia: reproductive pioneering and moral pragmatism?

This paper highlights a number of theoretical issues relevant to this special issue of Culture, Health & Sexuality on the quality of offspring, including gender selection, ecofeminism, eugenics, reproductive agency, moral pioneering and reproductive pragmatism in China, India and Japan. First, it discusses various approaches to choice in sex selection, focusing on an instrumentalist and an ecofeminist approach. Second, it discusses issues of reproductive choice in the light of various concepts of eugenics and power, which have been used to characterise the relationship between the state, the individual and prenatal genetic testing. Third, it queries Foucault's notion of biopower in relation to reproductive agency. In reviewing the evidence, the chapter raises questions about how women and parents in Asian societies can be understood in terms of 'reproductive pragmatism', 'empowerment' and/or 'moral pioneering' when faced with the use of new reproductive technologies in modern societies