This master’s thesis focuses on the long-standing discriminatory exclusion of single women from those entitled to biomedically assisted reproduction in Slovenia. In the scope of this theoretical study, the importance of women's movement and the feminist struggle for women's reproductive rights around the world and in Slovenia is introduced, followed by the description of reproductive technologies and biomedically assisted reproduction procedures. A chronological overview of legislation regarding procedures concerning biomedical assistance in Slovenia is shown, as well as an overview of the legislation regarding this field in the member states of the European Union. From the secondary analysis of existing documentation and literature, an elaboration of the present problematic discourses and relevant concepts, which polarized the public during the pre-referendum debates and still indirectly legitimize exclusionary practices of controlling female reproduction in the given case, is derived below. These discourses include the ideal of the nuclear family, which functions as a field of ideological manipulation, the concept of singleness (as the opposite to the normative ideal of marriage) with an emphasis on the phenomenon of single women, and the debate about the right of a child to have two (heterosexual) parents versus a woman's right to freely decide on the birth of a child. What follows is the synthesis of concepts, topics, practices and discourses which were originally presented in a particular way into broader systemically rooted mechanisms and ideological background that prevent the implementation of constitutionally protected reproductive freedom in practice. In doing so, through a feminist perspective, we rely mainly on the elaboration and critique of the concept of reproductive technologies as a platform for the reproduction of antiquated structural inequalities through the formation and introduction of new subjects into the medical context, on the importance and role of the medical profession as a carrier of knowledge in a broader biopolitical perspective, and on emphasizing binary oppositions as argumentative bases within the mentioned political discussion for the purposes of ideological identification of the general public and the formation of political kinship. At the end, we give some additions that, in our opinion, represent possibilities for the political overcoming of currently valid discriminatory regulation. This thesis also points to the importance of a humanistic approach to the study of social dimensions of a problem that has so far been mainly treated through a medical perspective, and shows possibilities for further action in the direction of achieving greater equality and social justice in accessing constitutionally protected reproductive rights.
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