Pandemic Im/mobilities, reproductive injustices, and assisted reproductive technology use among Taiwanese LGBTQ parents

Abstract This article examines how mobility restrictions imposed by governments during the COVID‐19 pandemic intensified reproductive and mobility injustices. It traces shifting configurations of privilege and inequality within marginalized groups whose reproductive desires remain legally and socially unrecognized. Focusing on LGBTQ intending parents in Taiwan who must travel internationally to access assisted reproductive technologies (ART) due to legal exclusion at home, the article utilizes a queer reproductive justice framework to examine reproductive disruptions under pandemic mobility restrictions. As a haven from the pandemic and for LGBTQ marriage and family rights, Taiwan shows how the cross‐border mobility requirements undergirding LGBTQ reproductive quests conflicted with the immobilities deemed necessary to contain COVID spread. These conflicts not only deepened reproductive inequalities between heterosexual and LGBTQ intending parents; they also distributed reproductive vulnerabilities unequally within queer communities, magnifying class and gender differences between gay men and lesbian women due to differently embodied experiences of assisted reproduction, heightened logistical challenges of transnational third‐party reproduction, and redefined categories of “existential” and “essential” mobilities. Following reproductive disruptions into the post‐pandemic era, the article calls for a more expansive queer reproductive justice framework that integrates mobility justice with efforts to redress longstanding LGBTQ reproductive inequalities.