The use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART)—in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, and gestational surrogacy—challenges contemporary notions of what it means to be parents or families. Camisha A. Russell argues that these technologies also bring new insight to ideas and questions surrounding race. In her view, if we think of ART as medical technology, we might be surprised by the importance that people using them put on race, especially given the scientific evidence that race lacks a genetic basis. However if we think of ART as an intervention to make babies and parents, as technologies of kinship, the importance placed on race may not be so surprising after all. Thinking about race in terms of technology brings together the common academic insight that race is a social construction with the equally important insight that race is a political tool which has been and continues to be used in different contexts for a variety of ends, including social cohesion, economic exploitation, and political mastery. As Russell explores ideas about race through their role in ART, she brings together social and political views to shift debates from what race is to what race does, how it is used, and what effects it has had in the world.

Assisted reproduction, with its test tubes, injections, and gamete donors, raises concerns about the nature of life and kinship. Yet these concerns do not take the same shape around the world. In this innovative ethnography of in vitro fertilization in Ecuador, Elizabeth F.S. Roberts explores how reproduction by way of biotechnological assistance is not only accepted but embraced despite widespread poverty and condemnation from the Catholic Church. Roberts’ intimate portrait of IVF practitioners and their patients reveals how technological intervention is folded into an Andean understanding of reproduction as always assisted, whether through kin or God. She argues that the Ecuadorian incarnation of reproductive technology is less about a national desire for modernity than it is a product of colonial racial history, Catholic practice, and kinship configurations. God’s Laboratory offers a grounded introduction to critical debates in medical anthropology and science studies, as well as a nuanced ethnography of the interplay between science, religion, race and history in the formation of Andean families.

Focuses on the practice of cross-racial gestational surrogacy, in which a woman--through in-vitro fertilization using the sperm and egg of intended parents or donors--carries a pregnancy for intended parents of a different race. Concentrating on the racial differences between parents and surrogates, Harrison is interested in how reproductive technologies intersect with race, particularly when brown bodies produce white babies. She provides an interdisciplinary analysis that includes legal cases of contested surrogacy, historical examples of surrogacy as a form of racialized reproductive labor, the role of genetics in the assisted reproduction industry, and the recent turn toward reproductive tourism. --From publisher description.

A provocative examination of how unequal access to reproductive technology replays the sins of the eugenics movement Eugenics, the effort to improve the human species by inhibiting reproduction of “inferior” genetic strains, ultimately came to be regarded as the great shame of the Progressive movement. Judith Daar, a prominent expert on the intersection of law and medicine, argues that current attitudes toward the potential users of modern assisted reproductive technologies threaten to replicate eugenics’ same discriminatory practices. In this book, Daar asserts how barriers that block certain people’s access to reproductive technologies are often founded on biases rooted in notions of class, race, and marital status. As a result, poor, minority, unmarried, disabled, and LGBT individuals are denied technologies available to well-off nonminority heterosexual applicants. An original argument on a highly emotional and important issue, this work offers a surprising departure from more familiar arguments on the issue as it warns physicians, government agencies, and the general public against repeating the mistakes of the past.

The use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART)—in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, and gestational surrogacy—challenges contemporary notions of what it means to be parents or families. Camisha A. Russell argues that these technologies also bring new insight to ideas and questions surrounding race. In her view, if we think of ART as medical technology, we might be surprised by the importance that people using them put on race, especially given the scientific evidence that race lacks a genetic basis. However if we think of ART as an intervention to make babies and parents, as technologies of kinship, the importance placed on race may not be so surprising after all. Thinking about race in terms of technology brings together the common academic insight that race is a social construction with the equally important insight that race is a political tool which has been and continues to be used in different contexts for a variety of ends, including social cohesion, economic exploitation, and political mastery. As Russell explores ideas about race through their role in ART, she brings together social and political views to shift debates from what race is to what race does, how it is used, and what effects it has had in the world.

Following the birth of the first “test-tube baby” in 1978, Assisted Reproductive Technologies became available to a small number of people in high-income countries able to afford the cost of private treatment, a period seen as the “First Phase” of ARTs. In the “Second Phase,” these treatments became increasingly available to cosmopolitan global elites. Today, this picture is changing — albeit slowly and unevenly — as ARTs are becoming more widely available. While, for many, accessing infertility treatments remains a dream, these are beginning to be viewed as a standard part of reproductive healthcare and family planning. This volume highlights this “Third Phase” — the opening up of ARTs to new constituencies in terms of ethnicity, geography, education, and class.

In the tradition of Silent Spring and The Sixth Extinction, an urgent, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking book about the ways in which chemicals in the modern environment are changing—and endangering—human sexuality and fertility on the grandest scale, from renowned epidemiologist Shanna Swan. In 2017, author Shanna Swan and her team of researchers completed a major study. They found that over the past four decades, sperm levels among men in Western countries have dropped by more than 50 percent. They came to this conclusion after examining 185 studies involving close to 45,000 healthy men. The result sent shockwaves around the globe—but the story didn’t end there. It turns out our sexual development is changing in broader ways, for both men and women and even other species, and that the modern world is on pace to become an infertile one. How and why could this happen? What is hijacking our fertility and our health? Count Down unpacks these questions, revealing what Swan and other researchers have learned about how both lifestyle and chemical exposures are affecting our fertility, sexual development—potentially including the increase in gender fluidity—and general health as a species. Engagingly explaining the science and repercussions of these worldwide threats and providing simple and practical guidelines for effectively avoiding chemical goods (from water bottles to shaving cream) both as individuals and societies, Count Down is at once an urgent wake-up call, an illuminating read, and a vital tool for the protection of our future.

This book paints a comprehensive portrait of Mexico’s system of assisted reproduction first from a historical perspective, then from a more contemporary viewpoint. Based on a detailed analysis of books and articles published between the 1950s and 1980s, the first section tells the story of how the epistemic, normative, and material infrastructure of the assisted reproduction system was built. It traces the professionalization process of assisted reproduction as a medical field and the establishment of its professional association. Drawing on ethnographic material, the second part looks at how this system developed and flourished from the 1980s up to 2010, its commercialization process, how the expansion of reproductive services took place, and the messages regarding reproductive technologies that circulated within a wide discursive landscape. Given its scope and methods, this book will appeal to scholars interested in science and technology studies, reproduction studies, history of medicine, medical anthropology, and sociology.

A quiet revolution has been taking place during the past three decades. The way that children enter families has changed radically among upper middle class families. In the 1980s infertility increasing became defined as a medical problem that could be solved with assisted reproductive technologies (ART) rather than through adoption. Asexual or ‘assisted conception’ involving medical technologies such as in vitro fertilization and embryo transfers began to replace sexual reproduction for infertile couples. Third parties, referred to as surrogates are hired to assist individuals and/or couples who wish to conceive and child with whom they share a genetic tie. This has resulted in a ‘surrogate baby boom.’ Outsourcing the Womb provides a critical introduction to the global surrogacy market. A comparative analysis of the assisted reproductive technology and surrogacy industry in Egypt, Israel, India and the United States disentangles the intersecting roles of race, religion, class inequality, religious law, and global capitalism. Gestational surrogacy challenges the idea of ‘natural’ reproduction and of the meaning of parenthood. What role should the state play in providing individuals and families with access to reproductive technologies? This book concludes with a discussion of ‘reproductive justice’. The goal of this new, unique series is to offer readable, teachable "thinking frames" on today’s social problems and social issues by leading scholars, all in short 60 page or shorter formats, and available for view on http://routledge.customgateway.com/routledge-social-issues.html For instructors teaching a wide range of courses in the social sciences, the Routledge Social Issues Collection now offers the best of both worlds: originally written short texts that provide "overviews" to important social issues as well as teachable excerpts from larger works previously published by Routledge and other presses.

From one of the world’s leading authorities, a practical resource guide filled with the essential information you need to know about assisted reproduction Third-party reproduction is now easier, more accessible, and more successful than ever before, yet it is still a complex process. Before you start down this path to parenthood, there are important questions to consider such as, “How are sperm, eggs, and embryos screened?”, “How do I find a donor?”, or “What are the legal issues surrounding surrogacy?” Here, psychologist Kim Bergman—an expert in the field and a mother herself through assisted reproduction—provides the answers you need and more. Your Future Family provides a roadmap for navigating the journey of building a family through assisted reproduction. It outlines the very first steps you should take, the options available to you at each turn, and includes essential advice and tips to help set you up for success. Filled with personal anecdotes from Bergman’s own life, as well as the lives of her clients, this book brings the human element of creating a family this way to life. The definitive primer on assistant reproduction,Your Future Family provides a foundational knowledge of the entire process, includes essential facts, as well as a list of resources to help you along the way. Kim Bergman’s expertise and her open, honest approach will inspire confidence to fulfill your dreams of creating a family.