Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Third Phase: Global Encounters and Emerging Moral Worlds

Following the birth of the first test-tube baby in 1978, Assisted Reproductive Technologies became available to a small number of people in high-income countries able to afford the cost of private treatment, a period seen as the First Phase of ARTs. In the Second Phase, these treatments became increasingly available to cosmopolitan global elites. Today, this picture is changing - albeit slowly and unevenly - as ARTs are becoming more widely available. While, for many, accessing infertility treatments remains a dream, these are beginning to be viewed as a standard part of reproductive healthcare and family planning. This volume highlights this Third Phase - the opening up of ARTs to new constituencies in terms of ethnicity, geography, education, and class.