This book explores how conditions for childbearing are changing in the 21st century under the impact of new biomedical technologies. Selective reproductive technologies (SRTs) - technologies that aim to prevent or promote the birth of particular kinds of children - are increasingly widespread across the globe. Wahlberg and Gammeltoft bring together a collection of essays providing unique ethnographic insights on how SRTs are made available within different cultural, socio-economic and regulatory settings and how people perceive and make use of these new possibilities as they envision and try to form their future lives. Topics covered include sex-selective abortions, termination of pregnancies following detection of fetal anomalies during prenatal screening, the development of preimplantation genetic diagnosis techniques as well as the screening of potential gamete donors by egg agencies and sperm banks. This is invaluable reading for scholars of medical anthropology, medical sociology and science and technology studies, as well as for the fields of gender studies, reproductive health and genetic disease research.

Based on fieldwork conducted in Hanoi, Haunting Images explores how Vietnamese families handle the difficult decisions presented by new reproductive technologies. At the center of the book are case studies of thirty pregnant women whose fetuses were labeled "abnormal" after an ultrasound examination. By following these women and their relatives through the painful process of reproductive decision-making, Tine M. Gammeltoft offers both intimate ethnographic insights into day-to-day lives in a Southeast Asian country and a sophisticated theoretical exploration of how subjectivities are forged in the face of moral assessments and demands. Across the globe, ultrasonography and other technologies for prenatal screening offer prospective parents new information and present them with agonizing decisions never faced in the past. For anthropologists, this diagnostic capability raises important questions about individuality and collectivity, responsibility and choice. Based on this work in Vietnam, Gammeltoft argues that in order to comprehend how life-and-death decisions are made, anthropologists must pay closer attention to human quests for belonging.

Based on fieldwork conducted in Hanoi, Haunting Images explores how Vietnamese families handle the difficult decisions presented by new reproductive technologies. At the center of the book are case studies of thirty pregnant women whose fetuses were labeled "abnormal" after an ultrasound examination. By following these women and their relatives through the painful process of reproductive decision-making, Tine M. Gammeltoft offers both intimate ethnographic insights into day-to-day lives in a Southeast Asian country and a sophisticated theoretical exploration of how subjectivities are forged in the face of moral assessments and demands. Across the globe, ultrasonography and other technologies for prenatal screening offer prospective parents new information and present them with agonizing decisions never faced in the past. For anthropologists, this diagnostic capability raises important questions about individuality and collectivity, responsibility and choice. Based on this work in Vietnam, Gammeltoft argues that in order to comprehend how life-and-death decisions are made, anthropologists must pay closer attention to human quests for belonging.