Sometimes I Rain on Parades
Sorry for the radio silence, but I’ve had the flu of DOOM for the last week. I’m still hacking my lungs out. It’s hard to put two sentences together while stoned out of your head on NyQuil. But I’ve been thinking on this one for awhile, since I got called out in a comment thread on another site for calling fertility treatments ethically problematic.
This is very expensive.
Of course, I’m not saying that women shouldn’t do what they want with their bodies. And I’m not also not one to tell anyone what to do with their money, either.
However, I cannot ignore the fact that Fertility Treatments are not a choice for many, if not most, women in America. I’m sure there are loads of poor women who can’t have children, who would gladly choose fertility treatments in order to do so. But no one spares them a thought. Where’s their choice? Much like with abortion, often times true choice is reserved for those who can pay for it. And not everyone can.
Don’t get me wrong, I have friends who have conceived via fertility treatments, and I’m very happy for them, and that they could afford to go that route. But not everyone who wants kids can.
I work at a university, and I have the same insurance as many of our other staff, office staff, maintenance workers. While that insurance paid for my sterilization, and pays for maternity care, it does not pay for fertility treatments. In fact, since the post-surgical follow up for my sterilization is most commonly a part of a fertility treatment plan (using radioactive dye to see if the fallopian tubes are blocked), no matter how many forms my doctor sent assuring them that this was not a fertility treatment, I still wound up paying $1800 for this procedure.
So, is it really a choice, when so many women don’t get to choose it? Are you going to be the one to tell a working class woman that she doesn’t deserve to have the child she so desperately wants because she’s poor, but you can because you have money? Or decent insurance? But bringing up the ethics of fertility treatments is apparently, anti-feminist.
This isn’t my only concern with fertility treatments, after having seen several friends go through them, but it’s the big one. I admit, that a lot of my interest/concern is purely academic however, since I have all the maternal instinct of your average cactus.
Polimicks 
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