The Pursuit of Parenthood: Reproductive Technology from Test-Tube Babies to Uterus Transplants

by Margaret S Marsh, Wanda Ronner

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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

Published August 6, 2019

Reviews

[Lara Freidenfelds · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was not that long ago that “test tube babies” only existed in science fiction. I remember my shock when, in 2007, one of my students at Wellesley College told me that she was an IVF (in vitro fertilization) baby. “The technology couldn’t be that old, could it?” I thought. In The Pursuit of Parenthood: Reproductive Technology from Test-Tube Babies to Uterus Transplants, historian Margaret Marsh and OBGYN Wanda Ronner demonstrate that IVF — in which an ovum or ova are removed via surgery from a woman’s ovaries, fertilized with sperm in a petri dish, and the resulting embryo or embryos are reimplanted in her uterus — has long since come of age, and deserves historical analysis. The sisterly duo present a lively, panoramic history of IVF and its associated reproductive technologies and social arrangements…

read the rest at Nursing Clio: https://nursingclio.org/2019/10/23/in...

[Roo Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A solid history of (primarily) IVF. It starts with testing on rabbits in the 1930s and moves through history up to today. There are some interesting stories of fraud, politics, surrogates breaking contracts, and the writing is seemingly unbiased, but it's not a spectacular read. If you are interested in IVF, surrogacy, tubal disease, uterine transplants, embryos, artificial insemination, egg retrieval, donor eggs/sperm, or cryopreservation, then this might be a great book for you.

[Megan Segraves · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the repeal of Roe and the potential implications upon IVF treatment I became very interested in the history of IVF. I have been fortunate to avail myself of the technology successfully and wanted to know more about how this came to be. This book built my TBR pile from the end notes and helped me learn so much about the medical and social history of IVF. I will now read the author’s other works because this was top notch.