Everything Conceivable: How the Science of Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Our World » (Reprint)

Liza Mundy received her A.B. degree from Princeton University and an M.A. at the University of Virginia. She is a feature writer at The Washington Post Magazine and her work was selected by Oliver Sacks for inclusion in The Best American Science Writing 2003. She has won awards from the Sunday Magazine Editors Association, among others. She lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her husband and two children.

Award-winning journalist Liza Mundy captures the human narratives, as well as the science, behind the controversial, multibillion-dollar fertility industry, and examines how this huge social experiment is transforming our most basic relationships and even our destiny as a species.

Skyrocketing infertility rates and dizzying technological advances are revolutionizing American families and changing the way we think about parenthood, childbirth, and life itself. Using in-depth reporting and riveting anecdotal material from doctors, families, surrogates, sperm and egg donors, infertile men and women, single and gay and lesbian parents, and children conceived through technology, Mundy explores the impact of assisted reproduction on individuals as well as the ethical issues raised and the potentially vast social consequences. The unforgettable personal stories in Everything Conceivable run the gamut from joyous to tragic; all of them raise questions we dare not ignore.

The New York Times - Polly Morrice

…much of the information in Everything Conceivable is fascinating—and scary. Who knew that the drop in teenage pregnancies may have less to do with effective sex education than with unexplained fertility declines in young men? And the book gains considerable depth from Mundy's reportorial urge to dig into all aspects of a story.

Prologue: An Unexpected Development     xi
The New Reproductive Landscape     3
Women and the Dilemmas of Modern Motherhood     24
Every Man a Father, Every Man Infertile     61
It Takes a Village to Make a Child: ART and the Evolving Human Family     87
"Sperm Bank Helps Lesbians Get Pregnant!": How Women Changed the Sperm-Banking Industry-and the Makeup of the Family     108
Two Men and Two Babies: Gay Fatherhood Through Surrogacy     127
Single Mothers by Choice, and the Magazine Article That Made Them     154
ART and the Rights of the Child     177
Be Fruitful and Multiply: The Big Family, by Overnight Delivery     205
"It's Always a Party with Triplets": The Advent of High-Order Multiples     221
Deleting Fetuses: Selective Reduction, ART's Best-Kept Secret     253
Twins: The New Singleton     273
Souls on Ice: America's Frozen Human Embryo Glut     288
Choice Revisited: Ethics, Feminism, and ART     307
Epilogue: Reproductive Science and the Future of Our Families     331
Afterword to the Anchor Books Edition     345
Acknowledgments     351
Notes     355
Bibliography     381
Index     393