Access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies: The Case of France and Belgium. Jennifer Merchant, ed., 2020, New York: Berghahn Books, 2020, 242 pp.

Abstract

Vérité en deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au-delà (Truth on one side of the Pyrenees, error on the other). This maxim from Pascal, a French philosopher and mathematician, cannot be more pertinent to contextualize Access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies: The Case of France and Belgium. Like the Pyrenees in Pascal's aphorism, the border between France and Belgium delineates conflicting views of assisted reproductive technologies. France and Belgium are two neighboring countries that share many cultural traits but have distinctive ways of regulating and practicing assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). In this volume, scholars from France, Belgium, England, and the United States, representing anthropology, sociology, political science, philosophy, and law, contribute to the flourishing scholarship on ARTs. Their contributions offer a comparative and transnational portrait of a restrictive ART landscape in France and a liberal and pragmatic one in Belgium.