Harris, Lisa Hope (Author)
In vitro fertilization (IVF) came into existence in the United States not only because of the particular technical innovations achieved by reproductive scientists, but because of the ways in which reproduction intersected with American social ideologies and political structures. Specifically, IVF was built upon a trio of cultural phenomena that emerged in this country after World War II: delayed childbearing, as women entered the professional workforce in increasing numbers in the 1970's and 1980's; specific forms of capitalism and consumer culture, including the fee-for-service health care system; and the complex social and political impasse on abortion that arose in response to Roe v. Wade. Ideologies of race and class stratified access to reproductive technology, promoting its use among affluent white women, and inhibiting its access by poor women and women of color. This dissertation reconstructs the clinical and cultural history of IVF in the US from its emergence in the 1970's, through 2002. Drawing on oral histories with American IVF innovators, the archival documents of the first US IVF clinic, medical literature, national IVF outcomes databases, government reports, and popular media representations of infertility and IVF, it demonstrates that in vitro fertilization, as clinical procedure and as a social discourse, moved through five phases in its twenty-five year US history. The period prior to the birth of the first US IVF baby in 1981 was characterized by technical challenges and strident objections from religious forces nationwide. Between 1982 and 1984, IVF became a national phenomenon, and the moral and ethical questions of the earlier period were superseded by legal ones. From 1985 to 1991, the patient profile for IVF dominated developments, as both the media and clinicians sorted out which individuals would receive in vitro treatment. During this period the government did not articulate a national response to IVF's social and moral implications, determining instead that consumer protection measures were best. Between 1992 and 1997, scandal and critique from within and without tested IVF's resilience. Most recently, from 1997 to 2002, the role of IVF as a controversial object of inquiry diminished as the technology was integrated into medical practice in a manner that truly transformed American culture. IVF altered the relationship between reproduction and the market, re-invigorated controversy over abortion, and eclipsed public discussion of non-technological solutions to the difficulties generated by American women's growing commitments to balancing work and family. My dissertation explores the intimate relationship between medical technology and social and political life. The history of IVF gets to the heart of some of the most crucial issues of American life in the 20 th century.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 67/07 (2007). UMI pub. no. 3224897.
Thesis
Gurtler, Bridget E.;
(2013)
Synthetic Conception: Artificial Insemination and the Transformation of Reproduction and Family in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century America
(/isis/citation/CBB001567472/)
Chapter
Chelnik, Judy M.;
(2013)
Collecting Medical Technology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History
(/isis/citation/CBB001202348/)
Article
Jiang, Lijing;
(2015)
IVF the Chinese Way: Zhang Lizhu and Post-Mao Human In Vitro Fertilization Research
(/isis/citation/CBB001550709/)
Book
Roberts, Elizabeth F. S.;
(2012)
God's Laboratory: Assisted Reproduction in the Andes
(/isis/citation/CBB001213115/)
Article
Price, Jay M.;
Mershon, James;
Barlow, Teddie;
(2005)
Echoing off the Heart of the Heartland: The Mid-States Companies, Echocardiography, and Rural Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB000640021/)
Article
Sonenberg, Nahum;
Filipowicz, Witold;
(2012)
Aaron Shatkin (1934--2012)
(/isis/citation/CBB001320467/)
Article
Leavitt, Sarah A.;
(2006)
“A Private Little Revolution”: The Home Pregnancy Test in American Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB000670715/)
Book
Shelley McKellar;
(2018)
Artificial Hearts: The Allure and Ambivalence of a Controversial Medical Technology
(/isis/citation/CBB433691060/)
Article
Nancy Tomes;
(2021)
“Not Just for Doctors Anymore”: How the Merck Manual Became a Consumer Health “Bible”
(/isis/citation/CBB971333465/)
Article
Clarke, Morgan;
(2007)
Children of the Revolution: Ali Khamenei's “Liberal” Views on in vitro Fertilization
(/isis/citation/CBB001030948/)
Book
Robin E. Jensen;
(2016)
Infertility: Tracing the History of a Transformative Term
(/isis/citation/CBB154325131/)
Article
de Ceglia, Francesco Paolo;
Pogliano, Claudio;
(2011)
Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB001024822/)
Book
Dijck, José van;
(2005)
The Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging
(/isis/citation/CBB000641252/)
Article
Chiaki Shirai;
(April 2020)
Historical Dynamism of Childbirth in Japan: Medicalization and its Normative Politics, 1868–2017
(/isis/citation/CBB319096840/)
Book
Snow, Stephanie J.;
(2008)
Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World
(/isis/citation/CBB000951519/)
Article
Johnson, Martin H.;
Franklin, Sarah B.;
Cottingham, Matthew;
Hopwood, Nick;
(2010)
Why the Medical Research Council Refused Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe Support for Research on Human Conception in 1971
(/isis/citation/CBB001023689/)
Thesis
Levy, Jean Elizabeth;
(2007)
Controlling the Course of Scientific Advance: The Case of Human Embryology
(/isis/citation/CBB001560939/)
Article
Tessa Moll;
(2022)
Six Days in Plastic: Potentiality, Normalization, and In Vitro Embryos in the Postgenomic Age
(/isis/citation/CBB595238747/)
Article
Clarke, John;
(2007)
The History of Three Scientific Societies: The Society for the Study of Fertility (now the Society for Reproduction and Fertility) (Britain), the Société Française pour l'Étude de la Fertilité, and the Society for the Study of Reproduction (USA)
(/isis/citation/CBB000701048/)
Article
Watkins, Elizabeth Siegel;
(2011)
The Social Construction of a Contraceptive Technology: An Investigation of the Meanings of Norplant
(/isis/citation/CBB001031785/)
Be the first to comment!