Embodied progress: A cultural account of assisted conception By SarahFranklin, New York: Routledge. 2022. 231 pp.

In Embodied Progress, Sarah Franklin examines assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), particularly in vitro fertilization (IVF), in the United Kingdom. She discusses these technologies not only as biomedical innovations but also as cultural phenomena that reshape ideas of kinship, gender, and nature. The first edition (1997) is foundational to feminist and anthropologic scholarship on reproduction. In her recent second edition (2022), Franklin adds a modernized forward and afterward, situating ARTs within contemporary social, economic, and political contexts. This book review highlights the new perspectives introduced in the second edition. The first edition draws from anthropology, feminist theory, and biological science to trace how ARTs are constructed, contested, and lived. Franklin moves fluidly between national policy debates, media portrayals, intimate clinical encounters, and the lived experiences of her interlocutors. While not a traditional ethnography with extended observational histories, the work uses brief participant accounts to anchor a rich cultural analysis of ART in the moral and political debates of the late 20th century UK. Nearly thirty years later, Franklin uses the second edition to document both continuity and change in the assisted fertility landscape. She revisits themes from the original text, including the sense among patients as “having to try” IVF, framing it as a social obligation and a last resort, one's interlocutors may feel guilty of not pursuing. IVF, she argues, remains a “hope technology,” simultaneously offering the possibility of alleviating infertility-related pain while intensifying the anguish of reproductive failure. She contends that the drive to “never stop trying” is rooted in social values, relationships, and norms, not biology. Central to this second edition is Franklin's concept of “iFertility,” a term capturing how fertility aspirations have shifted from private matters to conditional, externally mediated projects. Franklin defines iFertility as a product of careful planning and investment and one dependent on supply chains, products, and markets. She describes how iFertility is embedded, now, in the global service economy and describes those undergoing IVF as consumers. This concept, she asserts, has evolved within a shifting societal understanding that fertility cannot be assumed and often requires technological intervention. Franklin also expands the scope of discussion in her second edition to address omissions from the first edition, namely regarding LGBTQ+ individuals pursing IVF. Franklin examines how IVF has enabled “rainbow families” to access new paths to parenthood while also noting that these technologies simultaneously reinforce heteronormative scripts in which biologically related children confer social legitimacy. Franklin further broadens her lens to the global scale, exploring the commercialization and commodification of reproduction. She traces how the corporate consolidation of fertility services intersects with, and often exacerbates, existing economic, racial, and gender inequalities, raising pressing questions about equity and access within the global “repro-commerce” market. Pedagogically, Embodied Progress remains highly adaptable. Its interdisciplinary reach makes it well-suited for both undergraduate and graduate courses, particularly when paired with more recent ethnographies of ART. The second edition's juxtaposition of early sociocultural understandings of ART with their current pervasiveness offers fertile ground for discussion on the ethics of medical intervention, governmental regulation, commercialization, global access, and evolving definitions of hope. As Franklin aptly notes, “The way society organizes and perceives reproduction tells you how it organizes and perceives everything else.” As IVF approaches its 50th anniversary in 2028, the updated Embodied Progress is a timely reminder that ARTs are simultaneously scientific and cultural projects. Franklin's ability to weave interlocutors’ voices into critical theory ensures the work remains a vital contribution to medical anthropology, feminist scholarship, and contemporary debates on reproduction.