Local Babies, Global Science Chap. 8 & 9

1. Conclusion

1.1. Reproductive technologies are highly gendered, they act upon preexisting local gender systems by bringing high hopes. ICSI can destroy some relations between first wives when she has become beyond child bearing age, and the man can fix his infertility. This in turn, can bring much happiness to the man, and much despair to the woman.

2. Marriage and Divorce in the Age of ICSI

2.1. Most Egyptian women would rather be the mother of a down-syndrome test-tube baby than to not be a mother at all. Also, they would prefer being the wife of an infertile man to be stigmatized by divorce. Female initiation of divorce is very rare, because of it's high stigmatization.

3. Conjugal Connectivity

3.1. Marriage is completion of half of Islam while worship and service to God is the other half. Marriage is considered for the purpose of procreation, love comes only after marriage. This is expected to develop through the parenting of children. When this is impossible, the marriage struggles if not deteriorates.

4. Femininities, Masculinities, and Child Desire

4.1. Women participate, often willingly to cover up the husband's infertility to make sense of the patriarchal gender system where public knowledge of his infertility will devalue his social status. Many Egyptian women deem motherhood a natural part of their lives, and of making them a woman. Without children, life isn't whole.

5. Infertility: His and Hers

5.1. Many Egyptian men refuse to acknowledge their own infertility or may refuse to seek treatment with their infertile wives, and this leads to cajolements and frustrations that are hard for women to bear.

6. The Man Who Replaced His Wife

6.1. If a woman is unable to reproduce men might replace her with a fertile woman. As in the example of Moustafa, he claims that replacing his first wife all seems worth it when he becomes the father of test-tube twins.

7. Chapter 8

8. Conclusion

8.1. After a decade of fertility treatments being practiced in Egypt the overall belief surrounding it still remains ambivalent or even hostile. Test tube baby making comes at an incredibly high cost. She risks her morals, medical health, psychological health, and social status. The risk of subjecting their families to public scrutiny and judgement carries a risk many couples aren't yet willing to take.

9. The Stigma of Support

9.1. Many Egyptians don't believe in psychiatry. This is because of the stereotype that if you go to a psychiatrist then you must be crazy. This attributes to the unmet need for psychological services especially for those undergoing fertility treatments.

10. Dilemmas of Disclosure

10.1. Many women who wished to tell their adult children about the help of IVF or ICSI treatment found it improbable to do so. Many of them simply stated that they hoped for the next generation in Egypt to be able to view test tube baby making as something normal. Stigmatization and discrimination are simply too much to risk when disclosing this sort of information in Egyptian society.

11. The "Top Secret" Stigma

11.1. Dr.Yehia released the statistic that 90% of couples at his center never released information about test-tube baby making to anyone else. Sometimes he was even asked to keep the information about one sibling from the other.

12. The Woman with the Secrets

12.1. Keeping a pregnancy secret is important to many infertile women in Egypt because she fears she may become another infertile woman's envy. Like Maisa, who began bleeding after a few months of her pregnancy after releasing the information, she attributed it to being envieed. Her psychological need for support isn't worth the chances of losing a baby.

13. Chapter 9