Erin Heidt-Forsythe
Professional Bio
Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Political Science. Erin Heidt-Forsythe received a PhD in Political Science, with a focus on Women and Politics, from Rutgers University. Her work examines the intersections of gender, political science, and bioethics. Employing mixed quantitative and qualitative methods, she studies US state legislation and policymaking about assisted reproductive technologies. She has published on assisted reproductive technologies, feminist bioethics, and social policy. Her areas of specialization include science, medicine, and health; reproduction and the body; American state politics and policy; interest groups and representation. From 2012-13, she was a grant-funded faculty research associate at the Center for Genetic Research Ethics and Law (CGREAL) at Case Western Reserve University. She joined the Departments of Women’s Studies and Political Science as an Assistant Professor in August 2013.
Publications
Between Families and Frankenstein
- Publication Date: June 2018
- Website: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520298194/between-families-and-frankenstein
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About the Book:
In the United States, egg donation for reproduction and egg donation for research involve the same procedures, the same risks, and the same population of donors—disadvantaged women at the intersections of race and class. Yet cultural attitudes and state-level policies regarding egg donation are dramatically different depending on whether the donation is for reproduction or for research. Erin Heidt-Forsythe explores the ways that framing egg donation itself creates diverse politics in the United States, which, unlike other Western democracies, has no centralized method of regulating donations, relying instead on market forces and state legislatures to regulate egg donation and reproductive technologies.
Beginning with a history of scientific research around the human egg, the book connects historical debates about the “natural” (reproduction) and “unnatural” (research) uses of women’s eggs to contemporary political regulation of egg donation. Examining egg donation in California, New York, Arizona, and Louisiana and coupled with original data on how egg donation has been regulated over the last twenty years, this book is the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the politics of egg donation across the United States.