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Honeymoon, medical treatment or big business? An analysis of the meanings of the term “reproductive tourism” in German and Israeli public media discourses

BACKGROUND/INTRODUCTION: Infertile couples that travel to another country for reproductive treatment do not refer to themselves as “reproductive tourists”. They might even be offended by this term. “Tourism” is a metaphor with hidden connotations. We will analyze these connotations in public media d...

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Autores principales: Bassan, Sharon, Michaelsen, Merle A
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3854005/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23962355
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1747-5341-8-9
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author Bassan, Sharon
Michaelsen, Merle A
author_facet Bassan, Sharon
Michaelsen, Merle A
author_sort Bassan, Sharon
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND/INTRODUCTION: Infertile couples that travel to another country for reproductive treatment do not refer to themselves as “reproductive tourists”. They might even be offended by this term. “Tourism” is a metaphor with hidden connotations. We will analyze these connotations in public media discourses on “reproductive tourism” in Israel and Germany. We chose to focus on these two countries since legal, ethical and religious restrictions give couples a similar motivation to travel for reproductive care, while the cultural backgrounds and conceptions of reproduction are different. RESULTS: Our research shows that the use of the metaphor “reproductive treatment” and its hidden messages depends on the writers’ intention and the target population. Although the phenomenon of patients travelling for reproductive treatment can fit into the definitions of tourism, the term emphasizes aspects that do not reflect patients’ reality. In both the German and the Israeli public media debate the term “reproductive tourism” is either used to criticize the economic aspects of the phenomenon or to attract patients as potential clients. CONCLUSIONS: Ethicists should be cautious when borrowing metaphors like “reproductive tourism” from the public debate. Our findings support Penning’s suggestion to use instead an unloaded term like cross-border reproductive care to describe the phenomenon in a more neutral way and to make it explicit whenever criticism is necessary.
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spelling pubmed-38540052013-12-07 Honeymoon, medical treatment or big business? An analysis of the meanings of the term “reproductive tourism” in German and Israeli public media discourses Bassan, Sharon Michaelsen, Merle A Philos Ethics Humanit Med Research BACKGROUND/INTRODUCTION: Infertile couples that travel to another country for reproductive treatment do not refer to themselves as “reproductive tourists”. They might even be offended by this term. “Tourism” is a metaphor with hidden connotations. We will analyze these connotations in public media discourses on “reproductive tourism” in Israel and Germany. We chose to focus on these two countries since legal, ethical and religious restrictions give couples a similar motivation to travel for reproductive care, while the cultural backgrounds and conceptions of reproduction are different. RESULTS: Our research shows that the use of the metaphor “reproductive treatment” and its hidden messages depends on the writers’ intention and the target population. Although the phenomenon of patients travelling for reproductive treatment can fit into the definitions of tourism, the term emphasizes aspects that do not reflect patients’ reality. In both the German and the Israeli public media debate the term “reproductive tourism” is either used to criticize the economic aspects of the phenomenon or to attract patients as potential clients. CONCLUSIONS: Ethicists should be cautious when borrowing metaphors like “reproductive tourism” from the public debate. Our findings support Penning’s suggestion to use instead an unloaded term like cross-border reproductive care to describe the phenomenon in a more neutral way and to make it explicit whenever criticism is necessary. BioMed Central 2013-08-20 /pmc/articles/PMC3854005/ /pubmed/23962355 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1747-5341-8-9 Text en Copyright © 2013 Bassan and Michaelsen; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Bassan, Sharon
Michaelsen, Merle A
Honeymoon, medical treatment or big business? An analysis of the meanings of the term “reproductive tourism” in German and Israeli public media discourses
title Honeymoon, medical treatment or big business? An analysis of the meanings of the term “reproductive tourism” in German and Israeli public media discourses
title_full Honeymoon, medical treatment or big business? An analysis of the meanings of the term “reproductive tourism” in German and Israeli public media discourses
title_fullStr Honeymoon, medical treatment or big business? An analysis of the meanings of the term “reproductive tourism” in German and Israeli public media discourses
title_full_unstemmed Honeymoon, medical treatment or big business? An analysis of the meanings of the term “reproductive tourism” in German and Israeli public media discourses
title_short Honeymoon, medical treatment or big business? An analysis of the meanings of the term “reproductive tourism” in German and Israeli public media discourses
title_sort honeymoon, medical treatment or big business? an analysis of the meanings of the term “reproductive tourism” in german and israeli public media discourses
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3854005/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23962355
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1747-5341-8-9
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