At a moment when reproduction is increasingly politicized, this volume explores the breadth of contemporary research on reproduction from the perspective of medical sociology, illuminating the lived experience of reproduction and offering insights to inform sociology and health policy. Reproduction, Health, and Medicine elucidates the tensions and contradictions between the normal physiologic processes of pregnancy and birth and the sociocultural beliefs, values, and arrangements that shape how we experience these biological phenomena. Investigating a range of reproductive events and experiences, including pregnancy, birth, abortion and fertility planning, the volume advances our understanding of how lay people and professionals make cultural meaning out of these processes in diverse settings. The chapters highlight how studies of reproduction, health, and medicine interface with core sociological concepts such as stratification, inequality, intersectionality, family and kinship, risk, and social control, and how experiences of reproduction are shaped by gender, race, class, sexuality and citizenship, as well as culture, health care systems, and health politics.

"Susan Markens has written an original, insightful book about reproductive politics in the United States, sure to be of wide intellectual and public interest. Focusing on the history of statewide surrogacy regulation and the corresponding 'culture wars' spawned by fertility issues, she offers a fresh look at a vexing and timely social issue. "Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction" is feminist political sociology at its finest."--Monica J. Casper, author of "The Making of the Unborn Patient"
"Policy and law on surrogacy and related issues remain in flux, as do society's views as to the directions in which we should move. Markens' analysis is rich, original, and sound, and she writes with clarity and conviction. Her comparative approach offers a more penetrating analysis than would a study of a single setting. "Surrogate Motherhood" is certain to make an impact: the work is timely, convincing, and intellectually sound."--Carole Browner, UCLA School of Medicine, Center for Culture and Health
"Susan Markens has written a thorough and fascinating account of the dilemmas and policy debates brought forward by surrogate parenting. This book is a splendid addition to the growing field of the sociology of reproduction."--Carole Joffe, author of "Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe v. Wade"
"Surrogate motherhood burst into the public eye in 1986 with the spectacular custody trial over 'Baby M.' Susan Markens deftly and judiciously moves beyond the feminist polemics, to brilliantly clarify the ostensibly opposed legal responses to this "Brave New World" of reproductive 'choice.' Whether surrogacy is banned as baby-selling orregulated as a service to the infertile, neither policy questions the myth that in the U.S. we have a private right to procreate. "Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction "stands with the path-breaking work of Kristin Luker, Dorothy Roberts, and Rickie Solinger, illuminating the public character of reproductive politics, privilege, and motherhood itself."--Linda M. Blum, author of "At the Breast: Ideologies of Motherhood and Breastfeeding in the Contemporary United States"
""Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction" is the definitive account of how and why surrogacy emerged as a political issue in the late 20th century and the alarming lag in US social policy in the face of rapidly advancing technologies that challenge our basic understandings of motherhood and kinship. Markens' provocative new book provides an intriguing solution to a puzzle: Why did a political consensus emerge in New York to ban surrogacy as 'baby selling' while California's response was to permit surrogacy, framed as a hardship of childlessness? More intriguingly, Markens shows how the public debates in both contexts relied on similar feminist arguments of 'choice' and 'the best interests of the child.' With her evenhanded and nuanced account, Markens delivers an exemplary and nuanced application of the comparative case method, primary textual analysis, print media and strategic interviews that gives voice, intrigue, and verve to her story. The book will appeal widely to students of reproductive politics and new genetic and reproductive technologies as they influence our conceptions of health, motherhood and paternity rights, as well as ideologies of gender and kinship."--SherriGrasmuck, author of "Protecting Home: Class, Race and Masculinity"