Global reproductive landscapes and with them cross-border routes are rapidly changing. This paper examines the reproductive routes and choices of fertility travellers from China to Russia as reported by medical professionals and fertility service providers. Providing new empirical data, it raises new ethical questions on the facilitation of cross-border reproductive travel and the commercialisation of reproductive treatment. The relaxation of the one-child policy in 2014 in China, the increasing demand for ART exceeding the capacity of national fertility clinics and the (...) difficulty of accessing treatment with donor eggs concomitant with a growing economic power of the upper–middle class are shaping the ART industry in Asia in new ways. A new development is Chinese citizens increasingly seeking ART treatment in Russia, which has a long-standing practice of ART governed by a liberal legislation. Furthermore, as China prohibits the export of gametes, Chinese fertility travellers rely on acquiring donor gametes once starting treatment abroad. Clinicians in Russia report three strategies amongst their Chinese patients: One group is using donor eggs of women of Asian appearance living in Russia or is hiring women of resembling appearance from third-party countries to donate their eggs in Russia to create resemblance in their offspring. Another group is buying white donor gametes to create Eurasian mixed children and thus ‘enhance’ their offspring. Providing novel empirical data, this article informs ethical deliberation and raises imminent questions for further research in this understudied geographic region and on cross-border reproductive treatment. (shrink)

This article employs the concept of affective assemblage to discuss how fertility travelers make sense of their decision to travel to Spain for oöcyte donation. Motherhood is brought into being through racialized and gendered discourses on ova exchange; idealized and feminized Spanish donor bodies. In their accounts, fertility travelers employ a narrative in which oöcytes become necessary spare parts, yet also, exotic substances with temperament and racialized nationality as well as collective bodies – shaped by the recipient woman’s body, intent, (...) and desire. In this manner, kinship is created through shared blood and space, desire and intent while differences between recipients and donors are minimized. The directionality of desire, hope, and imagination has the effect of naturalizing transnational egg donation and transforming it into a shared western European femininity of sorts. (shrink)