Fertility Technology

A concise overview of fertility technology—its history, practical applications, and ethical and social implications around the world.

In the late 1850s, a physician in New York City used a syringe and glass tube to inject half a drop of sperm into a woman’s uterus, marking the first recorded instance of artificial insemination. From that day forward, doctors and scientists have turned to technology in ever more innovative ways to facilitate conception. Fertility Technology surveys this history in all its medical, practical, and ethical complexity, and offers a look at state-of-the-art fertility technology in various social and political contexts around the world.
 
Donna J. Drucker’s concise and eminently readable account introduces the five principal types of fertility technologies used in human reproduction—artificial insemination; ovulation timing; sperm, egg, and embryo freezing; in vitro fertilization; and IVF in uterine transplants—discussing the development, manufacture, dispersion, and use of each. Geographically, it focuses on countries where innovations have emerged and countries where these technologies most profoundly affect individuals and population policies. Drucker’s wide-ranging perspective reveals how these technologies, used for birth control as well as conception in many cases, have been critical in shaping the moral, practical, and political meaning of human life, kinship, and family in different nations and cultures since the mid-nineteenth century.Series Foreword vii
Preface ix
1 Technology for Fertility 1
2 Fertility Technology before IVF 15
3 IVF and Its Successors 59
4 Law, Travel, and Religion 101
5 Technology, Kinship, and Family 129
6 Future Directions 153
Postscript: New Realities after Dobbs 191
Acknowledgments 193
Glossary 195
Notes 199
Further Reading 225
Index 227Donna J. Drucker is Assistant Director of Scholarship and Research Development at the Columbia University School of Nursing. She is the author of Contraception (MIT Press), The Classification of Sex, and The Machines of Sex Research.