Conclusion: Cosmopolitan Conceptions

In this chapter, Rahnia returns to Conceive, where she finishes her reproductive journey with a happier ending. Such IVF journeys bespeak the aspirations for parenthood and child desires that are driving global reprotravel in a world where 95 percent of adults want children. Today, infertile couples clamor for the “newest” new reproductive technologies, such as uterine transplantation, which is being attempted in the Middle East. Infertile couples are traveling to Dubai, because it is a city with its own technological aspirations. Yet, Dubai is also located in the middle of twenty-first-century regional violence and is politically unstable in its own right. Whether Dubai can withstand these contemporary challenges is questioned in the conclusion. The conclusion also focuses on the role of nation-states in providing IVF services to citizens as a basic healthcare right and form of reproductive justice. In the absence of such state services, there is a dire need for twenty-first-century activism—to prevent the preventable forms of infertility, to support the infertile and encourage alternative pathways to parenthood, and to provide safe, low-cost IVF, particularly in the Global South.