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Cases illustrating variables relevant to the following topics are presented: criteria for patient selection, egg “donation” and “surrogacy”, multiple gestations, and disposition of in vitro embryos after infertility treatment. For each topic, empirical and theoretical factors relevant to the cases are discussed from an “egalitarian perspective” that imputes privileged status to the standpoint of those who are “nondominant”. Implications of different positions about the moral status of gametes and embryos are also considered.

This essay is a historical and philological investigation of reproduction as it was understood in ancient Near East societies. It explores the differences in embryology as conceived by various cultures in the ancient Near East (primarily among the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Israelites) and their points of similarity. Embryological theories run the gamut from “high” science, with truths still accepted, to superstitions that said that female fetuses were carried on their mother’s left sides, required a longer pregnancy, and drained their mothers’ strength more than did male fetuses.

This introductory chapter talks about how infertility impedes reproduction among a disproportionate percentage of Middle Eastern men. This epidemic of male infertility—which many men attribute to their unrelenting life stresses, including war—has led to a recalibration of manhood. The notions of a “childless couple” or “child-free living” have yet to enter the cultural lexicon. This phenomenon of happily married but childless Middle Eastern couples is explored from Middle Eastern men's own perspectives. Many men do not want to be perceived as domineering patriarchs; they do not view fatherhood as the be-all and end-all of masculinity; they value conjugal intimacy and privacy, and they often adore their wives as friends and lovers, having learned sexuality together in the context of dual premarital virginity.

This chapter begins with an analysis of Ziad's story, who suffers from a very serious case of male infertility. Because male infertility is not a visible medical condition, most men have no idea that they are infertile until they attempt to impregnate their wives. Moreover, Ziad assumes that his infertility problem is unique. He knows no other infertile men and so does not realize the high prevalence of this condition across the Middle Eastern region. Without sophisticated DNA analysis, the causes of most cases of male infertility remain strictly speculative. This conflation of male infertility with problems of virility (i.e., sexual potency) is common. Ziad's story is interesting in that it conveys a full range of masculine responses to male infertility, including shifts in subjectivity over the course of a man's lifetime.

This chapter discusses how husbands' loving commitments toward their wives are a major part of Middle Eastern conjugality and an important feature of emergent masculinities in the region. Even seemingly traditional men such as Hatem—a farmer from a “closed” rural Syrian community—defy masculine stereotypes. Although conventional wisdom suggests that Middle Eastern men routinely divorce their infertile wives, Hatem's case provides evidence to the contrary. His story suggests that enduring conjugal commitments are a key feature of emergent masculinities in the Middle East, even in the face of intractable infertility. According to studies, this is as true among lower-class Middle Eastern couples, both urban and rural, as it is among cosmopolitan elites.

This chapter illustrates Abbas' story which speaks to the importance of family—not only Abbas' desire to create a family of his own but also the support he receives from his natal family members. Like many other young Middle Eastern men, Abbas chose to marry his female cousin Fatima out of love and affection, as well as family expectations. However, cousin marriage (known more formally as consanguineous marriage) may perpetuate life-threatening genetic conditions such as cystic fibrosis, and may be the single-most important reason why male infertility rates across the region are so high. When impediments to childbearing occur, families are often called upon to assist reproduction through various kinds of material and emotional support.

This chapter explores the tragic story of Shaykh Ali—a story of a devout Muslim man struggling with his infertile body, his attitudes toward sperm donation, and his unrequited sexuality. Shaykh Ali suffers from a preventable form of male infertility—namely, uncorrected, undescended testicles—which have stopped him from being able to produce sperm. Not all Middle Eastern men are as religiously pious as Shaykh Ali, nor have they suffered the same physical and emotional pain. Nonetheless, Shaykh Ali's story speaks in a powerful way to many of the themes in this study; including the role of Islam in shaping the uses of assisted reproductive technologies, Muslim men's general unwillingness to consider sperm donation as a solution to male infertility, and emerging areas of dissonance and dissent to the prevailing religious discourse.

This chapter analyzes how the vast majority of Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, reject both sperm donation and adoption as solutions to male infertility and childlessness. In the Arab countries, sperm donation is practiced only in Lebanon, but there, too, it meets with ardent resistance on the part of most men. The chapter narrates the story of Hasan, a police officer in southern Lebanon, who believes that he cannot regard a child conceived through donor sperm as his legitimate son. Hasan's reaction is not surprising in that assisted reproductive technologies evoke strong feelings about kinship. Of all of the anthropological work that has been written about the assisted reproductive technologies, the most substantial and most foundational is that which explores the effects of these technologies on kinship and family life.

For Etta's daughter Dorothea Dix Eliot (1871‐1957), who marries her father's associate pastor, Earl Morse Wilbur (1866‐1956), in 1898, a major challenge is teaching her husband to stay in tune with his family's needs and the politics of his profession. Taken first to a small, stingy parish in Meadville, PA, and then to Berkeley, CA, where Earl tries to run a new Pacific Unitarian School for the Ministry—today's Starr King—with almost no budget, Dodie must live with the poverty Etta had only imagined. More protective of her inherited caste because of their insufficiency, she lectures Earl on how to keep low‐paid domestics busy and humble. After struggling with infertility before a daughter is born, her dependency on a lower‐class midwife is further mortification. Later, the tragic death of her college‐age son dislodges her faith, and she dies a confessed agnostic.

The chapter deals with the beginning of life by probing in greater detail the ethics of sexual and asexual procreation in the light of certain reproductive technologies that transgress the boundaries of normal sexual reproduction. Today scientists speak about the possibility of noncoital production of human embryos through somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT or the “Dolly technique”) or using the cells from in vitro human embryos that have lost their capacity to form a new individual. The advent of new reproductive technologies made possible what is impossible in nature. These new technologies also challenge respect for life and human dignity in radical ways, raising difficult ethical issues for all societies. Some of these ethical concerns form the core of this chapter and are conveyed in the questions like, “What is the moral status of the embryo?” and “What kind of respect for its life does that require from society?”

I argue that in terms of both language and function, the White Monastery becomes a monastic family that replaces, in an idealized form, the families the monks are to have renounced. The use of kinship language allows Shenoute to stress egalitarian relationships, where all monks including Shenoute are “brethren,” even as he also uses particularly female metaphors of childbirth and infertility to define the proper monastic life. In addition, Shenoute's use of familial imagery allows him to create a genealogy that traces the monks’ “ancestry” to past biblical figures. I then move to an investigation of points of comparison between the Egyptian family and the monastery – that both provide food, clothing, shelter, and emotional support – to show how the family was a model for the monastery. Of particular importance is the shared expectation that the women's role in both was to provide clothing, thus allowing gendered, indeed patriarchal, aspects of the nonmonastic family to affect the monastery.

This chapter explores the ethical issues raised by reproductive technologies. The authors discuss the idea that relief of infertility is in itself a worthy ethical goal. They evaluate the concept of autonomy in the context of reproduction, and evaluate the role of law and regulation in constraining people's reproductive desires. The risks associated with reproductive technology are discussed, and the effects of individual reproductive decisions on the public are considered. The importance of consent in the context of fertility treatment is explored, and the idea that reproduction is inherently private is analysed. Ethical considerations related to children born as a result of reproductive children are also considered.

This chapter explores the third element of reproductive masculinity—the assumption of male virility—through the history and practices of the sperm-banking industry in the United States. It analyzes the social, technological, and economic forces that pushed male infertility into public light at the end of the twentieth century and led to the commodification of sperm. The chapter traces the processes of social deflection that come into play to reinstate ideals of masculinity in the face of the public exposure of male infertility. It also assesses the paradoxical nature of masculine privilege that valorizes sperm as the carrier of ideal human traits but still measures a man by his fertility.

The most conspicuous similarities among women's religions emerge in the realm of suffering and healing. Whereas all religions deal in some way with explanations of and solutions to suffering, women's religions are characterized by the particular emphasis placed on illness and curing. This emphasis is manifested theologically (elaborate explanations for suffering), ritually (key rituals are often healing rituals), in terms of membership (members often join because of illness), and in terms of leadership (a history of illness is typically part of the path to leadership). Almost all the women's religions devote a great deal of attention to suffering—especially illness—to the extent that some of the religions have been “accused” of being not much more than healing cults. Why do women create or join religions that deal with healing? One reason is that women bear the brunt of culturally assigned responsibility for infertility and all the physical consequences of pregnancy and childbirth. A more direct way in which motherhood figures into the religion-illness equation concerns the key biological transitions in women's lives: menarche, pregnancy, birth, lactation, menopause.