Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility, and the Pursuit of High Tech Babies

A WOMAN’S BATTLE WITH THE BILLION-DOLLAR BABY BUSINESS

Cracked Open is Miriam Zoll's eye-opening account of growing into womanhood with the simultaneous opportunities and freedoms afforded by the U.S. women's movement and new discoveries in reproductive technologies. Influenced by the pervasive media and cultural messages suggesting that science had eclipsed Mother Nature, Zoll––like millions of women around the world––postpones marriage and motherhood. She embarks on an exciting career, travels the globe, and eventually marries in her mid-30s. By 40, she has finally overcome her fears of being an unfit mother and is ready to embrace motherhood but nature does not cooperate.

In accordance with the times, she and her husband sign up for fertility treatments but neither one is prepared for the science-fiction world they have entered; a world full of medical seduction, capitalist conception and bioethical quagmires. Desperate to conceive, they turn into fertility junkies drawn into the cold, sterile world of the laboratory, where they increasingly find themselves disconnected from nature, their values, and each other. Eventually, they realize that the unregulated multi-billion-dollar U.S. fertility industry has promised her and millions of other couples far more than it can deliver.