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In this book, I undertake the first comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis of the politics of the “wild west” of egg donation in the United States. If egg donation is so publicly recognizable and evokes such social interest, why does the U.S. system fail to regulate it? This book challenges conventional thinking around egg donation politics, exploring answers to how egg donation is defined, debated, and regulated in the United States, as well as exploring the logic of why the U.S. system of politics is organized the way it is around egg donation. Building upon theories of normative femininity in reproduction and scientific research, this book examines the relationships between subnational politics and policy in contemporary egg donation. I use three interdisciplinary areas of inquiry—policy framing, body politics and morality politics, and representation by gender and political party to answer long-standing questions about egg donation and politics in the fields of women’s and gender studies, political science and policy studies, and bioethics. Employing case studies, qualitative narrative analysis, and quantitative public-policy analyses of an original data set of over eight hundred state-level public policies around egg donation, this book clarifies the ways that gender, race, and class, as well as political institutions and actors, create systems of egg donation politics and regulation, particularly at the subnational level.

At the center of Defining Vulnerabilitiesare the interlinked puzzles of why and how environmental health scientists have rallied around research on gene-environment interaction. Defining Vulnerabilities uses these efforts to molecularizeenvironmental health science as an analytic leverthat reveals important dimensions of the structure of the field of environmental health science;its relationships with other fields; its central institutions; and the commitments, practices, and strategies of those working within it. The central argument is that scientists’ perceptions of and responses to the structural vulnerabilities of the field of environmental health sciences have both intended and unintended consequences for what we know about the somaticvulnerabilities of our bodies to environmental exposures. Drawing on interviews with scientists, policy makers, and environmental justice activists, Defining Vulnerabilities illuminates key challenges to environmental justice and population health in the twenty-first century

The politics and science of health and disease remain contested terrain among scientists, health practitioners, policy makers, industry, communities, and the public. Stakeholders in disputes about illnesses or conditions disagree over their fundamental causes as well as how they should be treated and prevented. This thought-provoking book crosses disciplinary boundaries by engaging with both public health policy and social science, asserting that science, activism, and policy are not separate issues and showing how the contribution of environmental factors in disease is often overlooked.