Overview
- Editors:
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Ayo Wahlberg
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Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
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Tine M. Gammeltoft
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Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Presents the first book to specifically and comparatively focus on the routinized use of SRTs in the world today
Represents a broad, international, multifaceted first framing of this contentious field
Focuses on the actual ways in which SRTs are currently being developed, used and understood by couples, health care workers, doctors as well as regulators
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
Pages i-xvii
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- Ayo Wahlberg, Tine M. Gammeltoft
Pages 1-24
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Preventing Disease and Disability
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- Vincenzo Pavone, Sara Lafuente Funes
Pages 123-148
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Selecting Traits
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Front Matter
Pages 149-149
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Back Matter
Pages 193-198
About this book
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 sociology and science and technology studies, as well as for the fields of gender studies, reproductive health and genetic disease research.
Reviews
“This unique and ground-breaking volume defines a new field of “selective reproduction,” in which novel reproductive technologies and techniques allow for the birth of some children, but not others. Rich case studies from around the world make clear both the hopes and anguish of reproductive selection, particularly for women as potential parents. Together, these chapters pose major questions about the role of law, bioethics, and population policy making amidst the haunting specter of neo-eugenics. Selective Reproduction in the 21st Century should be essential reading for many audiences—social scientists of reproduction, bioethicists, disability rights scholars and activists, and the reproductive medicine community itself.” (Marcia C. Inhorn, Yale University, USA)
About the editors
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.
