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Few scenes in life are so tender as that of a loving grandmother gently stroking the tiny hand of her sleeping infant grandchild. Yet even this heartwarming scene, pondered long enough, leads us to the consideration of broader issues of human love and fertility. In a strictly biological sense, fertility means the ability to produce offspring. Because human beings are also technological, social, political, and cultural creatures, however, fertility is much more than simply biological. A helpful approach to understanding this complexity involves thinking about fertility as a four-element “matrix” (from Latin mater, matr- “mother,” also “womb” in later Middle