Sarah Franklin delivers the keynote address at the 2009

Scholar and Feminist Conference. Increased demand for assisted

reproductive technology (ART) and transnational adoption has been

propelled by a number of factors, including the development of new

technologies and changes in familial form - such as childrearing in

second or third marriages; lesbian, gay, and transgendered families; and

delays in childbearing and subsequent difficulties in conception - that

make ART helpful. Other relevant factors include environmental changes

that have negatively affected fertility levels, new levels of

transnational migration and interaction that have fueled awareness of

babies available for and in need of adoption, and concerns about genetic

diseases and disabilities. Effectively, the various imperatives and the

desires, both cultural and personal, that the use of ART fosters and

responds to, have created a "baby business" that is largely unregulated

and that raises a number of important social and ethical questions. Do

these new technologies place women and children at risk? How should we

respond ethically to the ability of these technologies to test for

genetic illnesses? And how can we ensure that marginalized individuals,

for example, people with disabilities, women of color, and low-income

women, have equal access to these new technologies and adoption

practices? And, similarly, how do we ensure that transnational surrogacy

and adoption practices are not exploitative? These questions and many

others on the global social, economic and political repercussions of

these new forms of reproduction were the focus of this year's Scholar

and Feminist Conference, "The Politics of Reproduction: New Technologies

of Life," which took place on February 28, 2009 at Barnard

College.