Abstract
In the last decade, large-scale financial investments in IVF have instigated a step-change toward a more consolidated organization of the fertility sector. This chapter analyzes this financialization and the recent changes in the clinical and commercial infrastructures of IVF by focusing on the logic of fertility efficiency. This notion rationalizes a host of changes, including the scaling up of smaller clinics into large fertility groups, the reorganization of labor, the automation of assisted reproduction, and the broadening of the indication for treatment. Drawing on interviews with fertility professionals, this chapter reveals how clinical, technological, and financial changes in IVF made in the name of efficiency are transforming both perceptions and practices of fertility. In doing so, the chapter focuses on three dimensions of efficiency that not only represent material shifts in the organization of contemporary IVF but reflect a change in the logic that both underlies the very understanding of fertility itself and drives the emergence of a more financialized and automated new reproductive order.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The New Reproductive Order |
| Subtitle of host publication | Changing In-Fertilities across the Globe |
| Publisher | New York University Press |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 16 Jul 2024 |
Keywords
- automation
- financialization
- fertility efficiency
- fertility sector
- IVF
- labor
- scaling up