Embryo Culture
Making Babies in the Twenty-first Century
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Injections + Appointments + Egg Retrieval + Embryo Transfer = Resources (Energy x Time x Emotion)"
That's the equation that was projected onto the screen when Beth Kohl and her husband first showed up at the in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic. "Good evening," the program's psychologist told the gathered infertile couples. "Before you begin your treatment, you should know that this program is emotionally and psychologically stressful."
And how.
In this marvelously unconventional account of her struggles to bear children, Kohl leads the reader on an oh-so-up-close tour of fertilization in America, and the ways in which science and miracle, technology and faith, converge to create life in the twenty-first century. Along the way, Kohl wrestles with a new world of medical ethics: Should she "selectively reduce" the number of embryos successfully implanted in the womb in order to prevent a potentially complicated pregnancy? How much genetic testing of fertilized eggs is too much? What is she supposed to do with the seven embryos left over from the IVF process?
When Andrew Solomon wrote The Noonday Demon, he opened the world of depression to readers as no writer had done before. And when Stephen L. Carter wrote Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, many readers were forced to completely rethink race and prejudice. Kohl's spirited and rich exploration of "embryo culture" will completely revise how we see modern motherhood.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1978, there was one successful in-vitro fertilization baby; less than 30 years later, "more than a million" IVF children have been born worldwide. Kohl, mother of three IVF babies, has wrestled with the questions people contemplating or experiencing IVF suffer through ("Are science-babies exactly like the traditional kind?"; "How far should we go to ensure that our investment of time, emotion, and money yield a healthy baby?"; "So who am I to tinker with God's Plan and/or Mother Nature?") and the dilemmas associated with multifetal pregnancies and frozen embryos. While leading the reader step-by- step in a leisurely meander through her own successful experience, Kohl informs the na ve ("Ovaries are a woman's primary reproductive organs and the warehouse for her lifetime supply of eggs"), shares the physical ("I inject Lupron into my thigh"), drops in the technical and statistical, addresses public policy issues ("how public schools... accommodate these children, some of whom have special needs as a result of their low-birth weights") and enters the religious and political debates concerning artificial reproductive therapy. In this insightful and honest narrative, Kohl shares her experience and offers comfort and companionship for readers dealing with physical challenges, personal and marital stress, and ambivalent answers to heavy questions.
