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

289 Pages·2019·6.046 MB·English

by  Margaret S. Marsh and Wanda Ronner

T H E
P U R S U I T O F
P A R E N T H O O D
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Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner
T H E
T H E P U R S U I T O F
REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY
P U R S U I T O F
P A R E N T H O O D
FROM TEST-TUBE BABIES
RePproducAtive TeRchnoloEgy fromN Test- TTube BHabies Oto UterOus TranDsplants
TO UTERUS TRANSPLANTS
Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
BALTIMORE
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© 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2019
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
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Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Marsh, Margaret S., 1945– author. | Ronner, Wanda, author.
Title: The pursuit of parenthood : reproductive technology from test- tube babies to uterus transplants /
Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner.
Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018048633 | ISBN 9781421429847 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 1421429845
(hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781421429854 (electronic) | ISBN 1421429853 (electronic)
Subjects: | MESH: Fertilization in Vitro—history | Reproductive Techniques, Assisted—history |
Infertility—history | Infertility—therapy | Reproductive Medicine—history | Health Policy |
United States
Classification: LCC RG135 | NLM WQ 11 AA1 | DDC 618.1/780599—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048633
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected].
Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled
text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post- consumer waste, whenever possible.
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For our dear friends
Maryellen and John Alviti,
who have shared so much
of our lives
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C O N T E N T S
Preface ix
Introduction: The Past as Prologue 1
1 Test- Tube Babies Just around the Corner 11
2 From First Dream to First Baby 31
3 IVF Comes to America 53
4 From Miracle Births to Medical Mainstream 78
5 The Elusive Search for National Consensus 102
6 A Lot of Money Being Made 121
7 Beyond Infertility 146
8 Can the Wild West of Reproductive Medicine Be Tamed? 184
Appendix: Assisted Reproductive Technologies
by (Some of) the Numbers 213
Acknowledgments 221
Notes 227
Index 265

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P R E FA C E
People have been known to introduce us at conferences as the infertility
sisters. Margaret is a historian of women with a special interest in gender
and the family; Wanda is a gynecologist. For nearly three decades now, the
two of us have been thinking, talking, and writing about the history of infer-
tility, reproductive medicine, and reproductive sexuality. And we really are
sisters. We never imagined that our collaboration would span our careers
when we started out, oh so casually, in 1988. Wanda had just returned to
Philadelphia to practice after she completed her residency. At the time, Mar-
garet was close to finishing her second book, and Wanda said, “Why don’t
we do a little project in the history of gynecology? Maybe a talk, or a paper?”
We had always been interested in each other’s work, and we both thought it
would be interesting to merge our two disciplines into a joint project. That
“little project” ended up becoming The Empty Cradle: Infertility in America
from Colonial Times to the Present. That first book led before long to our
second, The Fertility Doctor: John Rock and the Reproductive Revolution, which
explored the development of the field of reproductive medicine through the
life and career of one of the most prominent infertility specialists of the mid-
twentieth century, a man who later became famous as the co- developer of the
oral contraceptive.
After spending so many years thinking about these subjects, how could
we not want to bring our unique perspective to the late twentieth- century
transformation in reproductive medicine and technology? In vitro fertiliza-
tion—the creation of embryos outside a woman’s body—did more than al-
low women with certain diagnoses of infertility to conceive. It also made

ix
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