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This book explores how conditions for childbearing are changing in the 21st century under the impact of new biomedical technologies. Selective reproductive technologies (SRTs) - technologies that aim to prevent or promote the birth of particular kinds of children - are increasingly widespread across the globe. Wahlberg and Gammeltoft bring together a collection of essays providing unique ethnographic insights on how SRTs are made available within different cultural, socio-economic and regulatory settings and how people perceive and make use of these new possibilities as they envision and try to form their future lives. Topics covered include sex-selective abortions, termination of pregnancies following detection of fetal anomalies during prenatal screening, the development of preimplantation genetic diagnosis techniques as well as the screening of potential gamete donors by egg agencies and sperm banks. This is invaluable reading for scholars of medical anthropology, medical sociologyand science and technology studies, as well as for the fields of gender studies, reproductive health and genetic disease research.
List of contents
Part I: Sex Selection.- Chapter 1 Coping with Sex Selective Abortions in Vietnam: An Ethnographic Study of Selective Reproduction as Emotional Experience.- Chapter 2 The Development of Sex Selective Reproductive Technologies within Fertility, Inc. and the Anticipation of Lifestyle Sex Selection.- Part II: Preventing Disease and Disability.- Chapter 3 Moral Adherers: Pregnant Women Undergoing Routine Prenatal Screening in Denmark.- Chapter 4 Moral Bearing: The Paradox of Choice, Anxiety and Responsibility in Taiwan.- Chapter 5 Selecting What? Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis and Screening Trajectories in Spain.- Part III: Selecting Traits.- Chapter 6 They Don't Just Take a Random Egg: Egg Selection in the United States.- Chapter 7 Technologies of Enchantment: Commercial Surrogacy and Egg Donation in India.
About the author
Ayo Wahlberg is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is the recipient of two prestigious research grants, from the Danish Council for Independent Research (2011-2014) and the European Research Council (2015-2020).
Tine M. Gammeltoft is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her book, Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction in Vietnam, won the Eileen Basker Memorial Prize & AES Senior Book Prize.
Summary
This book explores how conditions for childbearing are changing in the 21st century under the impact of new biomedical technologies. Selective reproductive technologies (SRTs) - technologies that aim to prevent or promote the birth of particular kinds of children – are increasingly widespread across the globe. Wahlberg and Gammeltoft bring together a collection of essays providing unique ethnographic insights on how SRTs are made available within different cultural, socio-economic and regulatory settings and how people perceive and make use of these new possibilities as they envision and try to form their future lives. Topics covered include sex-selective abortions, termination of pregnancies following detection of fetal anomalies during prenatal screening, the development of preimplantation genetic diagnosis techniques as well as the screening of potential gamete donors by egg agencies and sperm banks. This is invaluable reading for scholars of medical anthropology, medical sociologyand science and technology studies, as well as for the fields of gender studies, reproductive health and genetic disease research.
