An Embryonic Nation: Life Against Health in Canadian Biotechnological Discourse

Abstract

This article traces the protracted public debate over reproductive and genetic technologies in Canada through an examination of the federal government’s efforts to pass legislation in the area. Four attempts were made, in 1997, 2000, 2003, and finally 2004, before a bill was passed that regulated the use of embryos in both infertility treatments and nonreproductive genetic therapies. At stake in the debate was the supremacy of health over life as a fundamental value of Canadian national identity, and the role of biotechnology in ushering Canada into a new era of prosperity and global leadership. Using a feminist cultural framework, the author challenges notions of modernity versus postmodernity in the social construction of bodies, nations, and knowledge. She critiques the legal intrusions on women’s bodies in particular for the way that they, perhaps inadvertently, offer some limited form of autonomy for embryos as valuable commodities in scientific progress. Canada has long been considered to occupy a unique space in the Western world as a new country that has effectively skipped over some of the assumed logical steps toward modern nation building. Many have pointed to the country’s lack of revolution in its history as endemic to its problematic position as a modern nation-state. Although some may contest this as a carte blanche characterization, it is nonetheless a generally accepted and even sometimes cherished ideal, seen as central to Canada’s consensual, rational civil culture. However, in an era of globalization and transnationalism, where everything is cited as potentially revolutionary, that perception could stand in the way of Canada gaining access into this brave new world order. Thus, it is interesting that the government has placed a claim on biotechnology, and in particular health and therapeutic research, as a major priority for both economic and intellectual growth. At the same time, however, the legal and regulatory frameworks established thus far can only be characterized as strategies of avoidance. Since the final round of failed legislation on abortion in 1989,