“ART” is an acronym that stands for assisted reproductive technology, a designation that refers to various artificial methods that are sometimes used to achieve wanted pregnancies. ARTs can include medications that induce ovulation, intrauterine insemination, in vitro fertilization, eventually, very probably, reproductive cloning, among a proliferating number of other techniques.
In more everyday parlance I have sometimes heard that “A” in ARTs fleshed out into the phrase artificial or alternative reproductive technologies instead, and I do think it is interesting to contemplate the force of such terminological substitutions on the ARTificial imaginary.
I personally prefer to think of ARTs as alternate reproductive technologies, because the term alternative better bespeaks for me the connection of ARTs to the progressive politics of choice as well as to what seems to me most radical and appealling in the politics of choice: its palpable emancipatory queerness.
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