From laboratories to chambers of parliament and beyond: Producing bioethics in France and Romania

In a European context marked by heterogeneous Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) practices, this article will elucidate and compare the norm elaboration processes pertaining to ART in France and Romania. Using an experimental five-phase model encompassing experimentation, excesses, social mobilization, legislation and contestation, I will examine the processes linking micro (everyday medical practices), meso (institutional regulation) and macro (legislation) levels of ART bioethics in the two countries since the 1980s. ART has developed in France and Romania on different time frames, and Romania's management of ART is decisively influenced by Ceauşescu's pro-natalist policy. However, I will show how the two countries share similar trajectories along the proposed model's first three phases of norm elaboration, and, in recent years, how both have witnessed the emergence of social actors' claims for a more liberal and state-sponsored access to ART, requiring a redefinition of bioethics in line with reproductive social justice at national levels. This is fed by contemporary medical practices and social values, and an increasing transnational interconnectedness between social actors.