The growing use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) poses a myriad of ethical dilemmas that clinicians, gamete donors and recipients, policy makers and others confront each day around the world. These dilemmas underlie the development and implementation of a range of institutional, professional and public policies. But various stakeholders view, interpret and respond to these conundrums in different ways that must be taken into account, and that generate numerous social science research questions.

In recent years, scholars and others have increasingly sought to build bridges between bioethics and social science (Ives, 2008; Ives and Draper, 2009). These efforts stem in part from heightened awareness of the fact that philosophical approaches to bioethics can be abstract in ways that make them difficult to apply in ‘real world’ settings. In addition, bioethics seeks to examine the ethical, legal and social implications of advances in biotechnology, necessitating multidisciplinary approaches, and posing questions as to how such integration can, or should best occur (Strech, Synofzik and Marckmann, 2008).

This book attempts to both engage in, and comment upon, these intersections between bioethics and social science, illustrating how these two sets of disciplinary realms can enrich each other, through complementary and integrative approaches and insights.