Political prisoners and sperm smuggling from Israeli prisons. New reproductive and gender-specific scenarios in Palestine

Abstract

The article proposes the results of a research carried out in Palestine, during which I interviewed political prisoners’ wives who underwent a reproductive treatment during their husbands’ captivity. This article is part of a body of studies that investigates the different and heterogeneous applications of new reproductive technologies within different contexts. It describes the phenomenon of the sperm-smuggling from Israeli prisons and it investigates its consequences in terms of reproductive alternatives and gender roles.
With the aim of adding complexity to political and biopolitical readings, widely widespread when it comes to israeli-palestinian conflict, I describe this phenomenon firstly as a reproductive choice. I suggest it opens to women the way to new forms of one-parent families and I stress that these pregnancies are a way in which political prisoners can satisfy the reproductive imperative that links manhood to paternity.