Emergence of reproductive citizenship: the rise of infertility consciousness and activism in Britain

‘Just as people have the right to choose in having an abortion, couples like us must have a chance to have children’. This was a reaction by Peter Houghton, the founding member of the National Organisation for the Childless (NAC), to the 1977 ‘host mother’ case. This case opened a controversial discussion about surrogate motherhood in Britain after a childless couple made a private arrangement with a prostitute. NAC emerged as a grassroots community-based support group in Birmingham, which in 1976 became a national network supporting childless people. In 1991, it was reformed as ISSUE, and it subsequently merged with CHILD to form Infertility Network UK (2003); late renamed as Fertility Network UK (2016).

In this paper, I focus on the emergence and early work of NAC between the mid-1970s and the 1990s. I analyse published and radio materials by and about NAC, and interviews with its former members and affiliates. By taking a perspective of new social movements, I illustrate that NAC emerged as part of health activism centred on identity politics. My argument is that NAC positioned itself as a crucial player in lobbying for the rights of infertile couples with a view to overcome childlessness, especially following the invention of IVF (1978) and privatisation of fertility care. As such, NAC facilitated the emergence of a specific mode of reproductive citizenship, which aimed at preventing infertility leading to childlessness. In this talk, I problematise this mode of reproductive citizenship as produced by NAC, and forms of inclusion and exclusion it entailed.