Birth Rights and Wrongs: How Medicine and Technology are Remaking Reproduction and the Law

Millions of Americans rely on the likes of birth control, IVF, and genetic testing to make plans as intimate and farreaching as any over a lifetime. This is no less than the medicine of miracles. It fills empty cradles, frees families from terrible disease, and empowers them to fashion their lives on their own terms. But accidents happen.

Pharmacists mix up pills. Lab techs misread tests. Obstetricians tell women their healthy fetuses would be stillborn. Political and economic forces conspi...