Abstract
This paper presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the way the Australian press constructed the issues related to conceptive technologies (IVF and IVF‐surrogacy particularly) during the period when the technologies were most visibly controversial. It asks how medical technology, the profession, ethical debates and research were presented, focussing on the representation of women's bodies, ‘motherhood’, and consumerist conceptions of medical solutions to infertility.Moral, ethical and political issues, including feminist critiques of conceptive technologies and medical power were found to be presented in limited and partial ways ‐ by the ‘medical‐miracle’ (human interest) or the ‘experts‐debate‐legal‐issues’ genres of press report. In text and in photographs, the press showed mothers and babies as the (positive) products of technology. Women were shown reacting, in emotional terms, to the productive power of technology. Men were active, protective, expert, and the source of rational, abstract talk. The press relied heavily on proponents of the technologies for their news stories. The results are discussed in terms of Foucault's general analysis of the history of discourses of sexuality and feminist critiques of conceptive technologies.
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