Inseminação Caseira e Maternidade Lésbica: reflexões sobre corpo, direitos e saúde reprodutiva no Brasil

Abstract

There are many barriers to practicing motherhood that deviates from the heteropatriarchal standards of family. For cisgender lesbian and bisexual women in lesbian-affectionate relationships who express the desire to conceive with their partners a possible solution would be to seek specialized clinics in assisted human reproduction. However, the economic cost of biomedical procedures excludes a large portion of this group of women from accessing such services due to their socioeconomic condition. Thus, the practice of home insemination (HI), also known as self-insemination, emerges as a viable, more autonomous, and economically accessible alternative to achieve the goal of pregnancy. This phenomenon has become widely known through the internet, where networks of women can be found, mobilized through blogs and/or groups on online social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. These groups share personal testimonies, provide guidance for carrying out the procedure, recommend news articles and magazines on the subject, offer legal advice regarding the registration of "HI babies," and connect "tryiers" (relative to “trying to conceive”) individuals with "donors", as they self-identify. With the aim of investigating the practice of HI through the perspective of lesbian couples who have resorted to this method, I have chosen to reflect on topics related to the body, science, rights, and sexual and reproductive health, based on bibliographical readings and five remotely conducted semi-structured interviews via video calls. The questions range from how they became aware of the method to inquiries about their experiences with the healthcare system as mothers who experience dual maternity. By sharing the testimonies of these families, I seek to analyze the significance of HI in the family planning of these women and to understand the practice as an effective collective strategy for promoting reproductive health within a population that faces "symbolic infertility" and a lack of attention to their specific needs by the healthcare system. Nonetheless, it can be recognized that HI has enabled citizenship and reproductive autonomy to become a reality for diverse family configurations and forms of parenthood.