Global IVF and local practices The case of Ghana

The global boom of in vitro fertilization (IVF) has been followed by an explosion of anthropological studies of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). This chapter first provides an inventory and discussion of ethnographic books (66), edited volumes (33), and special issues of journals (7) on ARTs. The second part of the article focuses on ARTs in Ghana, one of the few sub-Saharan African countries having several IVF clinics, based on my ethnographic study in two private IVF clinics there. Building on theoretical notions of ARTs as socio-technical products (Inhorn and Birenbaum-Carmelli 2008) and the routinization of ARTs practices (Wahlberg 2018), I depict the contextual features co-shaping practices and procedures in IVF clinics in Ghana. While these clinics enable women and men facing fertility problems to make use of ARTs in the hope to fulfill their child wish, they do so in a highly stratified way. Particular contextual features, I argue, do not only structurally limit access to ARTs, but also inform actual clinical procedures and practices. These procedures and practices affect people’s options and experiences, as they increase the costs, medicalization, physical and/or social risks involved, and can be seen as exploiting people’s desperation for a child and anxiety about treatment failure.