UAE: Infertiles Rush To Dubai

In their desperate quest for conception, thousands of infertile couples from around the world travel to Dubai. New book tells stories of 220 repro-travellers from fifty countries.

In their desperate quest for conception, thousands of infertile couples from around the world travel to the global in vitro fertilisation destination of Dubai.

In the 400-page book from Duke University Press, ‘Cosmopolitan Conceptions’ Professor Marcia Inhorn highlights the stories of 220 repro-travellers from fifty countries that sought treatment at specialist clinics in Dubai.

These couples cannot find safe, affordable, legal, and effective IVF services in their home countries, and their stories offer a window into the world of infertility—a world that is replete with pain, fear, danger, frustration, and financial burden.

These hardships dispel any notion that travelling for IVF treatment is reproductive tourism. The magnitude of reprotravel to Dubai, Inhorn contends, reflects the failure of countries to meet their citizens' reproductive needs, which suggests the necessity of creating new forms of activism that advocate for developing alternate pathways to parenthood, reducing preventable forms of infertility, supporting the infertile, and making safe and low-cost IVF available worldwide.

Professor Inhorn of Yale University says, "The hope of becoming a parent sends men and women travelling to far-flung destinations like Dubai in pursuit of reproductive remedies.”

Inhorn examines both technological and moral issues surrounding choices to intervene, such as in vitro fertilization, egg and sperm donation, or surrogacy. She convincingly demonstrates the ways in which fertility is not just a dream and hope, but the right of a biological citizen who demands medical redress for disability from the state

The main reason for travel, according to the patients who responded to her survey, was unfriendly legislation in their home countries—such as the prohibition of certain techniques (egg donation, for example) or inaccessibility of the techniques because of patient characteristics (such as age, sexual orientation, or marital status).