Changing direction: the struggle of regulating assisted reproductive technology in Austria

This paper describes how and why the political regulation of assisted reproductive technology (ART), which has been rather restrictive in Austria for more than 20 years, was recently liberalized. In detail, the paper (1) sketches the content and rationale of the past and present regulation; (2) describes the political configuration that was responsible for the restrictive law; (3) outlines the lengthy political struggle as well as underlying attitudes, aspects of political culture that blocked a liberalization for a long time; (4) indicates sub-politics of individual citizens who appealed to national and European courts to change the law; and (5) describes the societal as well as political transformations that pushed for and supported the reform. Moreover, (6) it describes the effects of the restrictive law on women and couples who wanted to undergo ART treatment. Finally, (7) it looks at potential impacts of the new law on the practice of ART in Austria. The paper is partly based on the research carried out between 2007 and 2012 in the research project "Genetic Testing and Changing Images of Human Life" (LIFE) that was funded by the Austrian Genome Research Program (GEN-AU). The project included a number of qualitative empirical studies on Prenatal Diagnostis (PND) and Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnostis (PGD) in Austria in the political and clinical domain. (author's abstract)