Demarcating the dirty work: Canadian Fertility professionals’ use of boundary-work in contentious egg donation

Skye A. Miner

Social Science & Medicine, 2019, vol. 221, issue C, 19-26

Abstract: The potential medical risks to egg donors, in addition to the concern over the commodification of life, has led to debates surrounding the ethics of paying donors. In Canada, payment for eggs is prohibited by law; however, what is considered payment is contentious and has yet to be defined. The lack of legislative clarity coupled with increased ethical concerns over paying a donor has shifted egg donation from a medically-controlled procedure to a legal and social endeavor involving multiple professionals. Through semi-structured interviews with 52 medical and non-medical fertility practitioners, I show how medical practitioners use boundary-work to remove their practice from the ethical and legal debates surrounding egg donation, the “dirty work”. I examine how the medical profession relies on discourses of “practicing science” to present their work as favorable and removed from current debates and potential legal ramifications. In showing how medical practitioners rely on boundary-work to distinguish their work from non-scientific and non-medical activities, I expand Gieryn's original conceptualization of boundary-work to demonstrate how medical practitioners can selectively draw on their practice of science to remove their work from ethically and legally contentious issues, the dirty work.

Keywords: Canada; Infertility; Professionalization; Boundary-work; Dirty work; Emotional work; Ethics in health care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:221:y:2019:i:c:p:19-26

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.11.039

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