Privacy

I have been thinking about privacy lately, really about what is considered human dignity.  It is considered a basic human right that a person should be able to reproduce.  Even in cases when a person is unfit to raise their children, they retain that right, sometimes even in ridiculous circumstances.  I can recall countless occasions when I was outraged to see that a parent maintained rights to their children, even in cases of gross neglect and abuse.  So this is the stance of the world today - that a person is afforded a basic human right to have children, as many as they see fit, and to raise them as they see fit and a person is afforded much privacy in how they choose to carry out this plan (or lack of plan).

As soon as I walked into a doctor's office and uttered the words, "I can't get pregnant," these basic human dignities, rights and privacies slowly began to disappear, one by one.  First, nature deprived me of that right to have a child.  In the coming months, I was poked, prodded and analyzed.  Suddenly, it wasn't so cut and dry.  Whether or not I was allowed to conceive with the help of ART depended on my insurance, my finances, and even my weight.

During the course of this study, I am required to keep a daily log of things that are incredibly personal - everything from what my flow is like to when I have sex with my husband.  It's so surreal and uncomfortable to carry this packet around, not because I am embarassed or ashamed, but because I, through a twist of nature, have to hand in papers that reveal the inner-most information about us.

I have been researching adoption for years, and this process is just as grueling.  The applications require that I disclose my background, my savings, my credit history, my health, my infertility.  Again, I am putting my private life out there on paper for someone else to decide.

I can deal with nature's unfairness - it is inherent and it is everywhere.  It is unfair that some people can have ten children and that some can't have any.  It is unfair that some people get cancer and some people do not.  It is unfair that some people spend their lives disabled, disfigured, ill, and I understand that.  But the human side of this is the most difficult.

If a woman's ovaries and uterus function normally, she is afforded the right to privacy, and the right to reproduce, and the right to end a pregnancy, and the right to create a child in a private act of love.  If a woman's ovaries and uterus do not function normally, all of that disappears.  Then, it is up to someone else.  Either an insurance adjuster, or an RE, or a social worker, or an adoption agency, or a loan officer.  It's not up to her anymore.

I know that there aren't any easy answers, and I don't even know how I feel about some of the political agendas of the infertility community.  All I know is that I wish someone was working as vigorously for me to have a child as others are out there working for an unfit mother to keep hers.  And I wish that someone defended my right to have a pregnancy as passionately as others defend the life of an unwanted one.  I know these sound like heavy words, and I am not at all trying to open a discussion about these particular political agendas.  I'm not suggesting that those particular individuals and movements shouldn't have advocates, I just feel like maybe we deserve the same representation...