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Chapter 6 - Gender, Sperm Troubles, and Assisted Reproductive Technologies

By
Marcia C. Inhorn
Edited by
Jude Browne
Jude Browne
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

Louise Brown, the world’s first test-tube baby, was born more than forty years ago in England. For Louise Brown’s infertile mother, Lesley, in vitro fertilization (IVF), developed at the University of Cambridge, was a “hope technology” (Franklin, 1997), allowing Lesley to overcome her tubal-factor infertility and nine years of heart-breaking involuntary childlessness. Lesley’s story involved a complex reproductive quest, in which she traveled with her working-class husband, John, from their home in Bristol to Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge to undergo the IVF procedures. Then, due to intense media scrutiny and religious opposition, Lesley and John were forced to travel to yet a third location, Oldham General Hospital in the North of England, for the secret delivery of baby Louise by Cesarean section on July 25, 1978.

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Chapter
Information
Why Gender? , pp. 126 - 143
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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