The Unaltered Body? Rethinking the Body When IVF fails

Abstract

Drawing on a series of interviews with women and couples who have had IVF unsuccessfully and who have stopped treatment, this paper challenges the assumption that the (re)production of novel entities that is associated with the new reproductive and genetic technologies only occurs when treatment succeeds. I argue that the work of accounting for the experience of IVF failure generates, at least potentially, a novel, post-IVF body whose construction fragments the category of childlessness, and redefines what constitutes the (in)fertile body. These reconfigurations of normative categories of reproductive belonging serve to normalise their situation and resist the blame and exclusion that often accompanies the experience of infertility. The paper concludes that the assumption that innovation only occurs when treatment succeeds reproduces the problematic definition of IVF by its successes.