The Fertility Fix: the Boom in Facial-matching Algorithms for Donor Selection in Assisted Reproduction in Spain

This article reads the uptake of facial-matching algorithms by fertility clinics in Spain through the lens of ‘the fertility fix’: a software fix to the social reconfiguration of kinship and a fixed capital investment made by competing fertility companies and firms. ‘The fertility fix’ is proposed as a critical, ethical lens through which to situate algorithmic facial-matching in assisted reproduction in the context of the racial politics of the face and phenotype and the spatial politics of market expansion. While an ‘infertility crisis’ is often mentioned when explaining the growth of the assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) industry, the use of donated reproductive cells is tied up in societal, ecological and economic shifts. Combining Software Studies analysis with Marxist Feminist and trans*feminist perspectives on shifting re/production dynamics, the article details the role of computational technologies in promoting certain ideas and beliefs about family and fixing certain territories of capital flow.