Why can someone freeze their eggs in the United States for any reason, but the procedure is prohibited in China for unmarried women. What led Germany to ban egg donation, but made Spain a popular medical tourism destination for the process? Why has nearly all fertility care been covered in Israel for decades but public health insurance in Japan is just beginning to reimburse treatment? There is tremendous diversity in national policies and practices of assisted reproductive technology (ART), and often there are not easy answers as to the sources and effects of these divergences. Chia-Ling Wu’s Making Multiple Babies offers a compelling case for why some countries have changed their fertility practices to lower the incidence of multiples, that is, twins, triplets, and more, but others have failed to do so.
Specifically, Wu poses the question of why Taiwan has the highest rate of multiples resulting from in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the world. Multiples, in Sarah Franklin’s (Citation1997, 110) words, represent an instance of reproductive technology being “too successful,” as Wu notes. Increasing the chance that treatment will result in a pregnancy also increases that chance that it will result in a pregnancy with more than one fetus. But pregnancies and births to multiples are associated with greater health risks than singleton deliveries, and Wu explores these adverse outcomes in great detail.
