Nobody's Child, Everybody's Children:

Infertility and Reproductive Medicine: A Personal Perspective

While the discussion about the rights and limits of using “new reproductive technologies” continues, the need to deal with infertility on a personal level is paramount. Throughout the process of medical fertility treatment, the challenges of deciding which treatments my husband and I were willing to undergo in attempts to conceive a child provoked serious contemplation on what we believed about life, religion, spirituality, and ourselves as individuals and as a couple.  Different individual beliefs, personal desires, and expectations about what treatments options we were comfortable with and were willing to undergo contributed to the already challenging reality of having difficulty conceiving. The media coverage around NRTs, societal attitudes, religious viewpoints, governmental legislation, and financial considerations affected and often complicated the process of our personal decision making. Finding the parameters and limits of our own comfort zone regarding medical fertility treatment was not easy, but was indeed an important aspect of our life choices and is reflective of the bigger picture of reproductive autonomy as an important right. It is essential that the needs and interests of individuals like us, who might need the assistance of NRTs in their family building efforts, are understood, acknowledged, and kept at the forefront of this important issue.