Biomedical Treatment and Divine Assistance: Complementary Reproductive Itinerariesamong Catholic Women users of Assisted Reproduction Techniques (ARTs) in Argentina

OLMOS ÁLVAREZ, ANA LUCIA; JOHNSON, MARÍA CECILIA

Congreso; National Seminar Antropologhy in 21st Century and Beyond; 2022

Department of Anthropology University of Delhi

The Catholic Church is a global actor that still matters when sexuality and reproduction are at stake, and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) are not an exception.Catholic Church stands as a critical position around ARTs, understanding that separating sexuality and reproduction from the sanctity of marriage is opposed to natural and legitimate forms of procreation. Various encyclicals support this public position; moreover, the Vatican has an expert community advising on these subjects.Likewise, Assisted Reproductive Techniques (ART´s) are widely used in Argentina, even among Catholic believers, the country´s majority denomination (62.9 % according to 2019 CEIL-CONICET´s data). This paper proposes to recover these actors´ perspectives on science in general and reproductive medicine, taking into account the processes of dispute, negotiations, and articulation of meanings and practices with their religious cosmology.To carry out the proposed analysis, the article reconstructs and analyzes ART´s social, legal, and religious Argentinian context and the trajectories of actors (both experts and catholic users). Through a qualitative research approach, the work analyse in-depth interviews of ART´s users and ethnographical data from Catholic institutional spaces. The main dimensions of analysis addressed were the beliefs, experiences, and criticism referred to biomedicine and religion as therapeutic resources mobilized in users' reproductive trajectories. Reproductive technologies experiences arise as an appropriate event to explore how agents, practices, rituals, and religious objects are connected to health decisions and involve decisional, emotional, and interpretive aspects.