Everything Conceivable: The Impact of Reproductive Technology on Society

Touchy subject here. Everything Concievable by Liza Mundy explores the technological lengths to which people will go to concieve a child, and the societal implications of these technologies. The book discusses increasing infertility rates and the reasons for them (career-oriented women, STD's, and non-committal men among other things) and the science of new conception technology, from your basic artificial insemination procedures to surrogacy, IVF, and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.

Most of the book is put together using stories and interviews from real families Liza Mundy interviewed. She has chapters on sperm banks and egg donation, gay and lesbian familys, twin and triplet conception and birth, and the complex relationships resulting from people's attempts to achieve a biological child. She explores how these methods impact marriage and how difficult carrying and raising twins or higher order multiples can be, as well as the consequences of these procedures on women's health and possibly on the health of the resulting children.

And then there are the ethics of "selective reduction" and how the new reproductive technologies mesh (or don't) with feminism (and the book was definately written from a feminist perspective). Some of you may have already read the chapter on selective reduction, as it was making it's way around the pro-life blog world--that's the story where the mom sees her babies hearts beating and hands waving and then covers her face so she won't see when the doctor kills one of them as part of a selective reduction of triplets.