The new reproductive technologies, the old paternity

The article looks over the application of new reproductive technologies in humans (nRT), highlighting the simultaneity of the development of those technologies in the north worried about their low fertility and the campaigns for reproductive control through involuntary sterilizations in the poor south. The text also gathers contemporary debates around the first Spanish law on assisted reproduction of 1988. It shows that the eugenic project accompanies the development of nRT and the implications it has in terms of class, race and, particularly, of gender in its development and application in a context of "naturalization" or "genetization" of social identity. Although apparently the fecundation through donors and the birth through in vitro fecundation trouble the roots of western notions of family, maternity and paternity, in their origin and application those techniques seek to alleviate infertility by ensuring children biologically linked and phenotypically close to their parents, reinforcing the bio-genetic idea of identity and filiation.