These essays examine the global impact of infertility as a major reproductive health issue, one that has profoundly affected the lives of countless women and men. The contributors address a range of topics including how the deeply gendered nature of infertility sets the blame on women's shoulders.

This book focuses on reproductive health rights and assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in sub-Saharan Africa. Each chapter is connected to the other by focusing on different aspects of ART as a means of achieving conception. Topics such as regulation of ART practices, surrogacy and specific aspects of ART, which are gradually becoming acceptable but largely unregulated in Africa, promises to be of interest to scholars, researchers and fertility practitioners. Research in the book take a rights based approach and ethical analysis of ART practice in sub-Saharan Africa by authors from diverse backgrounds bringing together law and society perspectives. Readers stand to gain new knowledge on the societal, legal, medical and psychological requirements, effects and challenges of reproductive health rights and ART in the African context. The book is also relevant to UN Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being, given that it promotes and advocates for access to reproductive healthcare for persons who have difficulty or are unable to conceive without medical assistance.

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.

In the late 1990s, Egypt experienced a boom period in in vitro fertilization (IVF) technology and now boasts more IVF clinics than neighboring Israel. In this book, Marcia Inhorn writes of her fieldwork among affluent, elite couples who sought in vitro fertilization in Egypt, a country which is not only at the forefront of IVF technology in the Middle East, but also a center of Islamic education in the region. Inhorn examines the gender, scientific, religious and cultural ramifications of the transfer of IVF technology from Euro-American points of origin to Egypt - showing how cultural ideas reshape the use of this technology and in turn, how the technology is reshaping cultural ideas in Egypt.

In sub-Saharan Africa, older people make up a relatively small fraction of the total population and are supported primarily by family and other kinship networks. They have traditionally been viewed as repositories of information and wisdom, and are critical pillars of the community but as the HIV/AIDS pandemic destroys family systems, the elderly increasingly have to deal with the loss of their own support while absorbing the additional responsibilities of caring for their orphaned grandchildren. Aging in Sub-Saharan Africa explores ways to promote U.S. research interests and to augment the sub-Saharan governments' capacity to address the many challenges posed by population aging. Five major themes are explored in the book such as the need for a basic definition of "older person," the need for national governments to invest more in basic research and the coordination of data collection across countries, and the need for improved dialogue between local researchers and policy makers. This book makes three major recommendations: 1) the development of a research agenda 2) enhancing research opportunity and implementation and 3) the translation of research findings.

Despite France and Belgium sharing and interacting constantly with similar culinary tastes, music and pop culture, access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies are strikingly different. Discrimination written into French law acutely contrasts with non-discriminatory access to ART in Belgium. The contributors of this volume are social scientists from France, Belgium, England and the United States, representing different disciplines: law, political science, philosophy, sociology and anthropology. Each author has attempted, through the prism of their specialties, to demonstrate and analyse how and why this striking difference in access to ART exists.