Love in the Time of Zika examines the transformation of reproductive politics spurred by the Zika public health emergency in 2016. The Zika virus, a mosquito-borne disease with a direct link to fetal and children’s disabilities, provoked the surveillance of and intervention into women’s and girls’ bodies and lives. Paige Marie Patchin tracks this period of intense reproductive experimentation, from fast contraceptive implant insertion drives in Puerto Rico to the genetic modification of mosquitoes in Brazil, to explore the future of reproduction as environmental crises mount, public infrastructures wilt, and walls rise. Patchin questions what kind of a world we are building if the response to dangerous, global environmental problems like Zika is to pit fetuses against one another in a future of limited resources. Set between the twin specters of eugenics and fascism, Love in the Time of Zika argues for the relevance of reproduction to wider questions about what it means to be people living amongst other people, and people living amongst other beings.

Paige Marie Patchin is Lecturer in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre at the University College London.

Preface  ix
Acknowledgments  xiii
Introduction. Reproduction Redux  1
1. Two Children: Zika’s Public and Medical Cultures in the United States  33
2. Breeding Ground: Intervention I, Chemical Vector Control in Puerto Rico  55
3. (De)Population: Intervention II, LARC Distribution in Puerto Rico  83
4. On the Culmination of Species: Intervention III, Genetically Modified Mosquitoes in Brazil  107
Epilogue. Love Without Romance  137
Notes  145
Bibliography  163
Index  179