Regulating Dangerous Futures: The German Embryo Protection Act of 1990 - Legislation in Risk Society

Abstract

This article summarises the outcome of a research project which analyses the legislative debates about the German Embryonenschutzgesetz (Embryo Protection Act) in 1990. From 1988 to 1990 the German Parliament discussed legislation for the practices of assisted conception and embryo research. The term ‘risk’ is central to the discourse. For Ulrich Beck (1986) this emphasis on risk is a sign of the reflexivity which contemporary western societies have reached.

This article reads back into the risk discourse the values hidden in risk terminology: they are identified as fears about modernisation processes. The focus on risk in this article allows observation of late modernity’s unease about its own potential and a growing ambiguity about modern ideas of progress and control (Bauman, 1991). This ambiguity also becomes apparent in the strategies of policing which the German legislature offers as solutions to the perceived risks: different legislative strategies are developed to tackle the contradictory risk scenarios. These different strategies of policing are understood as the construction of ‘places of safety’ in the face of identified dangers: the ‘traditional family’, the ‘good doctor’, ‘professional’ judgement. Defining those boundaries allows the German legislature to juggle contradictory agendas. This explains the inconsistent and fragmented nature of the Embryo Protection Act 1990.