Chapter 1: It demonstrates specific responses and complex, local social arrangements surrounding the importation and use of IVF and ICSI in the predominately Muslim nation Egypt.
by Laura Obando
1. Adoption Restrictions
1.1. Resistance too adoption often has less to do with religion than with numerous deep-seated cultural anxieties biasing Egyptians of all social classes against this practice
2. Health Care Seeking
2.1. Women embark upon relentless quests for therapy, involving both "traditional" and "modern" forms of treatment
2.2. Among Egyptian physicians who treat male reproductive health complaints, male infertility accounts for 50 to 60% of all patient visits
2.3. In addition infertile individuals may seek help from a variety of traditional healers, laymidwives, herbalists, spiritual healers, diviners, and healers associated with various religious sects.
3. The Local in the Global
3.1. The global is always imbued with local meaning, such as local actors, living their everyday lives at particular historical moments in particular places, mold the very form that global processes take
3.2. Even though the same cultural "messages" may be received in different places,it is domesticated by being interpreted and incorporated according to local values
3.3. The notion of reproductive choice, then, over-privileges reproductive agency, underestimating the lack of free will and lack of free choice that so often characterize women's lives as they operate within multiple sets of structural and cultural constraints
4. Fertility-Infertility Dialectic and Pronatalism
4.1. Paradox of infertility is that its prevalence is often greatest in those areas of the world where fertility is also the highest (phenomena of so-called barrenness amid plenty)
4.2. Infertility in resource-poor, high-fertility countries ---->fertility-related beliefs and behaviors have a great influence.
4.2.1. Inter alia, ideas about conception,attitudes toward, and practices of contraception; and perceptions of risk and risk-taking regarding the body
4.3. Anthropological studies from around the world demonstrate widespread fears of hormonal contraceptives as agents that may actually cause infertility= false fear prevents people from participating in family planning programs
4.3.1. IUD use is partly responsible for the high rates of secondary infertility from IUD-facilitated spread of sterilizing infections
4.4. The failure to produce a child, especially in some societies is readily recognized by the couple, and those around them, as a major problem with enormous implications
4.4.1. Children equals: social security, social power, and social perpetuity desires
4.4.1.1. Intense pressure to procreate results in resorting new reproductive technologies
5. Gendered Suffering and Social Stigma
5.1. Individuals who are infertile, particularly in pronatalist societies such as Egypt, experience profound human suffering and are often willing to do anything even risking their own lives in the pursuit of physically taxing remedies, in their efforts to conceive.
5.2. Highly gendered stigma and suffering accompanying infertility, particularly when motherhood is the only way for women to enhance their status within the family and community .
5.3. Infertility also complicates martial dynamics, leading to martial instability in many cases and, occasionally, divorce or polygamous remarriage
5.4. Motherhood is a mandatory status for married Egyptian women. The inability regardless of professional/educational status results in social isolation, loneliness, and despair.
5.4.1. Egyptian women who are unable to contribute to "Islamic multitude" experience their barrenness amid plenty even more acutely