Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility, and the Pursuit of High Tech Babies

With journalistic flair, Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility, and the Pursuit of High-Tech Babies shines a light on the experiences of infertile couples within an industry that, in Zoll’s experience, offers inflated hope to desperate would-be parents… The memoir…will empower couples with information and insight about assisted reproductive technology in their quest to become parents. Zoll tells this story as an authority and with brutal honesty-no doubt a conversation starter. —Foreword Magazine

In a finely honed narrative of her personal journey, from grandparents to fertility specialists ‘peddling hope,’ award-winning writer Zoll examines news stories of exceptions, women pregnant after fifty, and paints the faces behind real statistics. She, too, starts with the idea that she has ‘invincible eggs, as she takes readers on a winding, five year path of hormone injections, in vitro fertilization, donor eggs,’ and adoption. Speaking frankly of her depression and the debilitating strain her and husband Michael’s quest for fertility put on their marriage, Zoll implicates her readers in the ‘push-me, pull-me.’ She states that she feels ‘reduced to [her] own baby-making capacity,’ a common theme with other couples encountered in the book. Zoll has clearly done her research, both for the book and for her personal journey, but it’s her craft not the statistics and study citations that make this a compelling narrative. ‘Hope,’ as Zoll states, ‘is a multi-billion dollar business.’ Over years, months, tens of thousands of dollars, multiple cities and houses, she joins the ‘Fertility Refugees’ in an adoptive parenting class. The end, ‘rest assured,’ will bring ‘joy, chaos, and exhaustion.’ —Publishers Weekly

The joy of becoming a parent through assisted reproduction is widely and warmly appreciated. But until now we’ve heard very little about those the majority in all age groups for whom high-tech fertility treatments fail. In Cracked Open, Miriam Zoll gives us an unblinking account of the emotional anguish, health complications, ethical quandaries and financial costs of her own journey into the fertility industry. Cracked Open is a wonderfully engaging memoir that also delivers vital insights into the consequences of our failure to adequately understand and regulate the business of assisted reproduction. —Marcy Darnovsky, PhD, executive director, Center for Genetics and Society, Berkeley, California

Cracked Open is both a touching love story and a riveting account of one couple’s heartbreaking encounters with the virtually unregulated, non-transparent and profit-driven world of reproductive medicine…This memoir is a powerful 21st century saga that should serve as the catalyst for a long-overdue critical public dialogue on the health risks and social costs of the emergence of an industry based on creating human life for profit. —Diane Beeson, PhD, Alliance for Humane Biotechnology, professor emerita, Department of Sociology, California State University, East Bay

Finally, a book that speaks to the experience of reproductive health consumers who gamble their hearts and pocketbooks on fertility treatments but don’t always win the jackpot they think they will. By telling her own story with honesty and humor, Miriam provides comfort, support and warnings to millions of women and men around the world coping with infertility. —Naomi Cahn, the Harold H. Greene Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School

Miriam Zoll has written a harrowing and moving account about her long ordeal in the maw of the unregulated U.S. infertility industry. Cracked Open is a love story set against a backdrop of the heartlessness of a cash-on-the-barrel-head medical trade that makes promises its technology infrequently keeps. Full of losses and spiritual insights, Zoll’s book provides a sobering perspective not offered by brochures and baby-laden clinic websites. It is a must read for anyone contemplating assisted reproduction. —Gina Maranto, author Quest for Perfection: The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings

In a skillful melding of personal story and medical and policy facts, Miriam Zoll asks all the right questions about the ethics of assisted reproductive technology and the place baby making has in women’s lives and identity. —Frances Kissling, president, Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy

Told in a refreshingly honest and forthcoming way, Miriam Zoll’s eloquent account of the conflict between her desire for motherhood and the ethical issues around reproductive technologies could not have arrived at a better time. In Cracked Open, Zoll leads us behind the scenes to slog through the personal and political ethics of creating human life in an unregulated marketplace, all the while dissecting through a critical lens how the reproductive industry markets its services to vulnerable women and men. —Rebecca Haimowitz and Vaishali Sinha, co-directors/producers of the award-winning film Made in India

Cracked Open takes an unvarnished look at the netherworld of assisted reproduction…Revealing a labyrinth of unverifiable hucksterism, unregulated therapies and uninformed ‘choices,’ Miriam Zoll courageously reveals her own battles with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and points the way for women in similar circumstances to heal themselves. This book can help couples make informed decisions and should be mandatory reading for both women and men entering their reproductive years. —Alexander Sanger, chair, International Planned Parenthood Council

Unlike most traumas-which are single, horrific and devastating events infertility is chronic, silent, and often hidden from the public eye. In her well-written, passionate, and funny memoir, Miriam Zoll shows us how this mournful health condition with its invasive medical treatments erodes one’s sense of confidence and purpose, and eats away at relationships. Cracked Open is a must read for people coping with infertility so they know they are not alone-and also for their friends and family, who often don’t understand the true traumatic nature of what their loved ones are experiencing. —Janet Jaffe, Ph.D., clinical psychologist, co-director, Center for Reproductive PsychologyThe world of assisted reproductive technologies is far more complex than it is often represented spanning significant ethical, commercial, legal, human rights and cultural lines. Cracked Open takes us on an import personal journey through this world, one in which women and men are being offered many options but few explanations. Jeremy Gruber, president, Council for Responsible Genetics

Cracked Open tells the whole truth about the brave new world of ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies) and this truth isn’t nearly as rosy as we’ve all been led to believe. I highly recommend this book to everyone truly concerned about the hearts and souls of humanity. —Christiane Northrup, M.D., Ob/Gyn physician and New York Times bestselling author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause

Miriam Zoll’s book, Cracked Open, is a powerful, personal narrative that details the hidden side of reproductive technologies in the United States a country that, for the most part, steadfastly refuses to regulate its fertility industry, and thereby fails to protect the interests of women and men who use assisted reproductive technologies, and the children who are born from them. —Françoise Baylis, professor and Canada Research Chair in bioethics and philosophy, Dalhousie University; former member of the board of directors, Assisted Human Reproduction Canada

Judy Norsigian is the executive director and co-founder of the internationally renowned Our Bodies Ourselves, a global women’s and girls’ health and human rights organization. She is an author and editor of the nine editions of Our Bodies, Ourselves, the organization’s landmark book on women’s health and sexuality. Michele Goodwin is the Everett Fraser Professor in Law at the University of Minnesota and the author/editor of several books, including Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Human Body Parts, Baby Markets, and Policing the Womb.