In this Book
- The Pursuit of Parenthood: Reproductive Technology from Test-Tube Babies to Uterus Transplants
- Book
- 2019
- Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press

summary
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 PublishersSince 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.
Table of Contents

- 2 From First Dream to First Baby
- pp. 31-52
- 3 IVF Comes to America
- pp. 53-77
- 5 The Elusive Search for National Consensus
- pp. 102-120
- 6 A Lot of Money Being Made
- pp. 121-145
- 7 Beyond Infertility
- pp. 146-183
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 221-226
Additional Information
ISBN
9781421429854
Related ISBN(s)
9781421429847
MARC Record
OCLC
1105893958
Pages
288
Launched on MUSE
2019-09-16
Language
English
Open Access
No