Temple or Prison: Religious Beliefs and Attitudes Toward the Body.

Most research on religion and the body has focused on the relationship between broad dimensions of religion, such as religious commitment or religious orientation, and body image or eating behaviors. The present study extends existing research by examining two specific religiously influenced beliefs about the body within a Protestant Christian sample, radical dualism and sanctification, and by focusing on a wider range of attitudes toward the body. The view of radical dualism sees the body as corrupt and separate from oneself, while the view of sanctification sees the body as holy, worthy of respect, and integral to one's being. This study examined how both radically dualistic and sanctified views of the body relate to attitudes people hold about their bodies including body appreciation and two components of body objectification: self-surveillance and body shame. To date, none of these attitudes have been examined in relation to specific, nuanced religious beliefs about the body. Participants were 243 adults from a variety of Protestant denominations. Using an online survey system and self-report measures, participants indicated the degree to which they hold radically dualistic and sanctified views about their bodies as well as their attitudes toward their bodies. Radical dualism was found to be negatively related to body appreciation and positively related to body shame. Sanctification was found to predict body appreciation. Body shame mediated the relationship between religious beliefs about the body and self-surveillance. This study contributes to a greater understanding of how religiously based beliefs about the body are related to attitudes about the body.

Reprowebs: a conceptual approach to elasticity and change in the global assisted reproduction industry.

In the last few decades, assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have become increasingly transregional and transnational, often involving travel within or between countries or even continents. Until recently, the global ART industry was marked by so-called 'reprohubs'-places (such as southern California, Dubai, Anand, and Mumbai) specializing in the provision of reproductive services. While reprohubs continue to exist, in the last few years, many have splayed out, transforming into something more akin to webs that encompass, but go beyond these hubs. These webs show a unique dynamic capability to tighten, entangle, or extend in reaction to local and global changes, a characteristic which became particularly obvious during the global Covid-19 pandemic. In this paper, we propose conceptualizing this new dynamic capability as 'reprowebs'-an approach that adds a new dimension to the existing conceptualization of reproductive travel and helps us to better understand current developments in the global ART industry.

The ART clock: Temporal limits to assisted reproduction.

Conceptualizations of the 'biological clock' in popular imaginary in the USA centre on the temporal limits of fertility, with assisted reproductive technology (ART) an increasingly proposed answer to these constraints (at least in the public imaginary). In this study, I analyse how surrogates in the USA understand their own bioavailability for others' reproductive needs in the commercial ART market vis-à-vis their own reproductive trajectories. Based on interview data with gestational surrogates, I propose a new concept of the 'ART clock' to capture how time shapes the experiences of reproductive workers in the US fertility clinic. My findings point to four important ART time-related issues: (i) women desiring to extend their own 'biological clocks' via surrogacy; (ii) significant time being needed to achieve and sustain third-party pregnancy; (iii) women extending their total reproductive time via repeat surrogacy 'journeys'; and (iv) temporal constraints to surrogacy reproduction regarding time of year, the day-to-day time effort, the number of surrogacy journeys, the total number of pregnancies, and surrogates' age and the ages of their children. Each of these aspects point to important ways that reproductive desire and time shape the labour of reproductive workers, highlighting temporal constraints to assisted reproduction and limits to ART as a solution to delayed reproduction and the biological clock.

Cross-border reproductive care in the USA: Who comes, why do they come, what do they purchase?

This article explores the participation of non-US-resident patients/clients in the US reproductive market, garnering a picture of cross-border reproductive care (CBRC) into the USA by drawing on the existing literature, identifying the frequency of and motivations for such arrangements, the primary sending countries, and the reproductive services sought. I find that although the expense of US CBRC necessarily limits the patient/client pool, it is largely non-economic factors that drive CBRC into the USA. The US CBRC patient/client base, which is diverse in terms of national origin, race and sexual orientation, is recruited by the US fertility industry and drawn to the full range of assisted reproductive technology (ART) services, such as in-vitro fertilization, surrogacy, oocyte donation and preimplantation genetic screening/preimplantation genetic diagnosis, available in the US market which are often restricted or limited in their countries of origin. CBRC patients/clients enjoy the legal clarity for establishing parentage and citizenship for their children available in the USA, as well as what some view as a medically and ethically superior ART market.

Safe Interorganizational Health Information Exchange During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Accurate and timely transmission of medical records between skilled nursing facilities and acute care settings has been logistically problematic. Often people are sent to the hospital with a packet of paper records, which is easily misplaced. The COVID-19 pandemic has further magnified this problem by the possibility of viral transmission via fomites. To protect themselves, staff and providers were donning personal protective equipment to review paper records, which was time-consuming and wasteful. We describe an innovative process developed by a team of hospital leadership, members of a local collaborative of skilled nursing facilities, and leadership of this collaborative group, to address this problem. Many possible solutions were suggested and reviewed. We describe the reasons for selecting our final document transfer process and how it was implemented. The critical success factors are also delineated. Other health systems and collaborative groups of skilled nursing facilities may benefit from implementing similar processes.

A limited market: the recruitment of gay men as surrogacy clients by the infertility industry in the USA.

Gestational surrogacy via egg donation is an expensive - and sometimes ambivalently undertaken - but increasingly popular route to planned fatherhood for some gay men. The surrogacy market in the USA plays an important role for gay men with the financial resources to access these services, as it is currently the only stable, commercial market in which there are legal protections for openly gay men. While a small, ethnographic and qualitative literature on the experiences of gay fathers via surrogacy exists, less is known about the state of the surrogacy industry towards gay men as clients. Here I investigate the surrogacy industry in the USA to ask how welcome gay men are in this market. I do so via a content analysis of patient/client recruitment on infertility clinic and surrogacy agency websites. Content analysis of 547 websites indicates that the majority of infertility clinics (62%) and 42% of surrogacy agencies do not directly advertise or appear to be welcoming to gay men. A minority of gay-friendly clinics and agencies, which cluster geographically, actively recruit gay men, creating a limited but niche market. The unequal recruitment of gay men as infertility clients reflects how normative ideas about gender, sexuality and social class are reproduced in the infertility industry. This, in turn, may impact gay men's procreative consciousness and decision-making about parenting, and exacerbate inequalities around their access to intentional genetic parenthood.