The Pursuit of Parenthood
eBook - ePub

The Pursuit of Parenthood

Reproductive Technology from Test-Tube Babies to Uterus Transplants

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Pursuit of Parenthood

Reproductive Technology from Test-Tube Babies to Uterus Transplants

About this book

A wide-ranging history of assisted reproductive technologies and their ethical implications.

Finalist of the PROSE Award for Best Book in History of Science, Medicine and Technology by the Association of American Publishers

Since the 1978 birth of the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, in England, more than eight million children have been born with the help of assisted reproductive technologies. From the start, they have stirred controversy and raised profound questions: Should there be limits to the lengths to which people can go to make their idea of family a reality? Who should pay for treatment? How can we ensure the ethical use of these technologies? And what can be done to address the racial and economic disparities in access to care that enable some to have children while others go without?

In The Pursuit of Parenthood, historian Margaret Marsh and gynecologist Wanda Ronner seek to answer these challenging questions. Bringing their unique expertise in gender history and women's health to the subject, Marsh and Ronner examine the unprecedented means—liberating for some and deeply unsettling for others—by which families can now be created. Beginning with the early efforts to create embryos outside a woman's body and ending with such new developments as mitochondrial replacement techniques and uterus transplants, the authors assess the impact of contemporary reproductive technology in the United States.

In this volume, we meet the scientists and physicians who have developed these technologies and the women and men who have used them. Along the way, the book dispels a number of fertility myths, offers policy recommendations that are intended to bring clarity and judgment to this complicated medical history, and reveals why the United States is still known as the "Wild West" of reproductive medicine.

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Yes, you can access The Pursuit of Parenthood by Margaret Marsh,Wanda Ronner in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Medicine & Gynecology, Obstetrics & Midwifery. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Preface
  7. Introduction: The Past as Prologue
  8. 1 Test-Tube Babies Just around the Corner
  9. 2 From First Dream to First Baby
  10. 3 IVF Comes to America
  11. 4 From Miracle Births to Medical Mainstream
  12. 5 The Elusive Search for National Consensus
  13. 6 A Lot of Money Being Made
  14. 7 Beyond Infertility
  15. 8 Can the Wild West of Reproductive Medicine Be Tamed?
  16. Appendix: Assisted Reproductive Technologies by (Some of) the Numbers
  17. Acknowledgments
  18. Notes
  19. Index