Cosmopolitan conceptions in global Dubai?The emiratization of IVF and its consequences

Cosmopolitan conceptions in global Dubai?The emiratization of IVF and its consequences

Inhorn, Marcia C.

2016/06/00

English

20160600

IVF in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is decidedly cosmopolitan, catering to an international clientele who are attracted to Dubai as a booming global city and an emerging medical tourism hub. Yet this Emirati state-sponsored project of medical cosmopolitanism exists in tension with another state-sponsored project, called emiratization. Emiratization is an attempt by the UAE government to prioritize the needs of Emiratis. In this article, the emiratization of the UAE’s IVF sector is explored. Since the mid-2000s, the Emirati IVF sector has undergone a series of profound transformations, involving the indigenization-qua-emiratization of IVF services in the country. Two main aspects of IVF emiratization are examined. The first involves the Emirati government’s brief experiment with IVF public financing, which started off as a generous IVF subsidization programme for all infertile couples, but ended up solidifying preferential treatment for local Emiratis. The second is the 2010 passage of UAE Federal Law No. 11, which now stands as one of the world’s most restrictive pieces of assisted reproduction legislation. Which now stands as one of the world's most restrictive pieces of assisted reproduction legislation and has fundamentally altered the landscape of IVF in the country.

Symposium issue: IVF - Global Histories. Edited by Sarah Franklin and Marcia C. Inhorn

14.4

14.4;9.3.1;1.2

health care delivery--[pri];infertility--[pri];in vitro fertilization--[pri];law--[pri]

culture;Islamic ethics;reproductive health services;social control

Dubai--[pri];United Arab Emirates--[pri]

IVF: Global Histories; April 2015;Yale University

Reproductive Biomedicine and Society Online2016, June; 2:24-31

Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

citation

34 refs

24056618 (online)