Erin Heidt-Forsythe, Rock Ethics Institute associate director and associate professor of political science and women's studies, will present a paper entitled "Legacies of Mistrust: Race, Gender, and Public Opinion Toward Reproductive Technologies" (co-authored with Heather Silber Mohamed, Clark University).

Abstract: On average, 10% of couples experience infertility, with women of color experiencing infertility at nearly twice the rate of non-Hispanic white women. Although infertility rates are significantly higher within Black and Latino communities, treatment and success rates – measured through diagnosis, testing, use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART), and live births – are significantly lower. Given massive racial disparities in reproductive healthcare, particularly in access and usage of reproductive technologies (such as in-vitro fertilization, a common ART) the limited scholarship on public opinion generally fails to explore how racial disparities in health impact attitudes towards new medicine, science, and in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a common type of ART. We seek to fill this scholarly gap about public opinion on IVF by gender and race/ethnicity by contextualizing the relationships between identity and opinions about medicine, science, and ART within research on body politics and stratification of medicine. Using data from a 2013 national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, we seek to understand whether medical mistrust is higher within Black and Latino communities; if attitudes towards IVF vary by race/ethnicity and gender; and whether medical mistrust is similarly associated with these attitudes.