This chapter critically examines the medicalization of female infertility within the Indian socio-legal and cultural framework, interrogating how reproductive governance, medical hegemony, and patriarchal ideology converge to disempower infertile women. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of the medical gaze (1973), this study explores how Indian infertility clinics operate as sites of disciplinary power, where women’s bodies are subjected to invasive scrutiny, technologized intervention, and social stigmatization. Emily Martin’s critique of the mechanization of reproductive bodies (The Woman in the Body, 1987) and Gita Sen’s analysis of reproductive labor and biopolitics (1994) also inform this discussion, revealing how infertility treatments in India reinforce hegemonic control over female bodies under the guise of biomedical progress. Through a close reading of feminist autobiographical medicine narratives—Rajagopal’s What’s a Lemon Squeezer Doing in My Vagina? and Kalki Koechlin’s The Elephant in the Womb, the chapter examines the affective and psychological dimensions of infertility in India. It engages Judith Butler’s theory of performativity (1990) to critique how Indian societal norms construct motherhood as the primary marker of female fulfillment, rendering infertile women socially “defective.” Sara Ahmed’s affective economies (2004) further highlight how the emotional distress of infertility is exacerbated by familial expectations and societal pressures, particularly in the context of arranged marriages and patrilineal inheritance structures. The study scrutinizes these texts against the Indian legal landscape governing assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). The Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021, while ostensibly regulating ART practices, reinforces exclusionary policies that privilege heterosexual, upper-caste, and financially stable married women while marginalizing single, queer, and Dalit women. The commercialization of reproductive healthcare, driven by India’s multi-billion-dollar fertility industry, commodifies female bodies, with ART clinics often coercing women into unnecessary, expensive, and physically taxing procedures. Finally, this chapter explores the resilient subjectivities of infertile women in India, examining how they resist medical and societal oppression through art, literature, and activism. Drawing on Lauren Berlant’s Slow Death (2007) and Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety (2005), this section argues that Indian women experiencing infertility navigate between submission and subversion, employing self-narration as a means of reclaiming agency. Through their embodied narratives, these women challenge the dominant pathologization of infertility, reframing it as a deeply personal, existential experience rather than a biomedical failure.

Medicalized Wombs, Mechanized Bodies

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发表日期：

2026年

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Shruti Ghosh

摘要

This chapter critically examines the medicalization of female infertility within the Indian socio-legal and cultural framework, interrogating how reproductive governance, medical hegemony, and patriarchal ideology converge to disempower infertile women. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of the medical gaze (1973), this study explores how Indian infertility clinics operate as sites of disciplinary power, where women’s bodies are subjected to invasive scrutiny, technologized intervention, and social stigmatization. Emily Martin’s critique of the mechanization of reproductive bodies (The Woman in the Body, 1987) and Gita Sen’s analysis of reproductive labor and biopolitics (1994) also inform this discussion, revealing how infertility treatments in India reinforce hegemonic control over female bodies under the guise of biomedical progress. Through a close reading of feminist autobiographical medicine narratives—Rajagopal’s What’s a Lemon Squeezer Doing in My Vagina? and Kalki Koechlin’s The Elephant in the Womb, the chapter examines the affective and psychological dimensions of infertility in India. It engages Judith Butler’s theory of performativity (1990) to critique how Indian societal norms construct motherhood as the primary marker of female fulfillment, rendering infertile women socially “defective.” Sara Ahmed’s affective economies (2004) further highlight how the emotional distress of infertility is exacerbated by familial expectations and societal pressures, particularly in the context of arranged marriages and patrilineal inheritance structures. The study scrutinizes these texts against the Indian legal landscape governing assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). The Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021, while ostensibly regulating ART practices, reinforces exclusionary policies that privilege heterosexual, upper-caste, and financially stable married women while marginalizing single, queer, and Dalit women. The commercialization of reproductive healthcare, driven by India’s multi-billion-dollar fertility industry, commodifies female bodies, with ART clinics often coercing women into unnecessary, expensive, and physically taxing procedures. Finally, this chapter explores the resilient subjectivities of infertile women in India, examining how they resist medical and societal oppression through art, literature, and activism. Drawing on Lauren Berlant’s Slow Death (2007) and Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety (2005), this section argues that Indian women experiencing infertility navigate between submission and subversion, employing self-narration as a means of reclaiming agency. Through their embodied narratives, these women challenge the dominant pathologization of infertility, reframing it as a deeply personal, existential experience rather than a biomedical failure.