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God’S Laboratory: Religious Rationalities And Modernity In Ecuadorian In Vitro Fertilization

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Abstract

Catholicism is the only major world religion that unequivocally bans the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Nevertheless, in Ecuador, Catholic IVF practitioners declare God’s dominion over their IVF laboratories and clinics in explaining pregnancy outcomes. My analysis of this routine combination of spiritual and material causal models in Ecuadorian IVF contributes to two ongoing discussions about (1) the tensions between “institutional” and popular forms of Catholic religiosity and (2) the proper boundaries of science in modernity. The Catholic Church’s historical and contemporary struggle to determine control of the miraculous has usually been characterized as a conflict between educated clergy and humble peasants. In the case of Ecuadorian IVF, we find, instead, educated elites and middle classes participating in this same contestation with the Church, proclaiming their direct ability to harness the power of God to effect material change on earth. This spiritual power to affect clinical outcomes does not take place just anywhere, but in clinic and lab, disrupting another set of presumptions about modern scientific practice and subjectivity. Like other Ecuadorian elites and middle classes, IVF practitioners are heirs to Enlightenment thought, and experience themselves as modern in their participation in these high-tech endeavors. But their spiritual approach to laboratory rationality does not trouble these IVF practitioners’ experience of themselves as moderns, prompting a reevaluation of the narratives of scientific modernity that limit their scope to Europe and North America.

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Acknowledgments

Mil gracias to the practitioners, patients, and priests who so generously gave of their time and attention throughout my research in Ecuador. I would also like to thank Tom Laqueur, Linda Layne, Naomi Leite, Stefania Pandolfo, Lucinda Ramberg, Kelly Raspberry, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Kate Zaloom, as well as Joe Dumit and the two anonymous reviewers from Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry for their comments and much needed criticisms of the manuscript. A double thank you goes to Adi Bharadwaj for taking on the job of organizing and editing this issue and for being such a terrific taskmaster. The Wenner Gren Foundation and the NSF division, Social Dimensions of Engineering, Science and Technology, provided funding for this investigation.

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  1. Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan, G112A Lane Hall 204 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Elizabeth F. S. Roberts

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  1. Elizabeth F. S. Roberts
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Correspondence to Elizabeth F. S. Roberts.

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Roberts, E.F.S. God’S Laboratory: Religious Rationalities And Modernity In Ecuadorian In Vitro Fertilization. Cult Med Psychiatry 30, 507–536 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-006-9037-8

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