Kin, Gene, Community Reproductive Technologies among Jewish Israelis [Hardcover]

Israel is the only country in the world that offers free fertility treatments to nearly any woman who requires medical assistance. It also has the world's highest per capita usage of in-vitro fertilization. Examining state policies and the application of reproductive technologies among Jewish Israelis, this volume explores the role of tradition and politics in the construction of families within local Jewish populations. The contributorsanthropologists, bioethicists, jurists, physicians and biologistshighlight the complexities surrounding these treatments and show how biological relatedness is being construed as a technology of power; how genetics is woven into the production of identities; how reproductive technologies enhance the policing of boundaries. Donor insemination, IVF and surrogacy, as well as abortion, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and human embryonic stem cell research, are explored within local and global contexts to convey an informed perspective on the wider Jewish Israeli environment.

Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeliis a medical sociologist at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her research concentrates on reproduction-related issues and the interface of health care and state politics. Birenbaum-Carmeli has published extensively in major professional journals and is the author ofTel Aviv North: The Making of a New Israeli Middle Class(Hebrew University Press) and the co-editor (with Marcia C. Inhorn) ofAssisting Reproduction, Testing Genes: Global Encounters with New Biotechnologies(Berghahn Books).

List of Tables and Figures

Introduction:Reproductive Technologies among Jewish Israelis: Setting the Ground
Daphna Birenbaum-CarmeliandYoram S. Carmeli

PART I: KIN: REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES AND THE QUEST FOR BIOGENETIC PARENTHOOD

Chapter 1.The Contribution of Israeli Researchers to Reproductive Medicine: Fertility Experts' PerspeclÓ$