Same sex couples and infertility

As some of you may know, I am a political junkie. I love politics and policy and yearn for the day when good policy actually makes for good politics (unfortunately that is all too rare).

Anyway, I follow many political blogs. The past several days the local political blogosphere in my city has been filled with talk of adoption by same sex couples. There are various proposals to make it illegal. I am a big proponent of equality for same sex couples. My mother is gay and so having been raised by a lesbian and seeing the difference between my mother and her partner and my dad and stepmom, it makes me mad when people argue that as a rule one couple is better/healthier/more natural than the other. Or that one set of my parents would automatically raise me better. Sure, I've had some of the usual stepchild-stepparent tensions with my mom's partner (you know, a little jealousy with losing the "smartest person in the family" label). But compared with my actual stepmother locking me out of her house when I went to visit my dad, it kinda gives you a different perspective on what family composition is healthier.

But yesterday I got a little obsessed with a particular blog post on this topic. And I think it has to do with our IF. See, there are two parts to the argument opponents of same-sex couples adopting that make me particularly sensitive to how they might also apply to couples struggling with IF. One, if nature doesn't think you should parent, then maybe you should listen. And two, the whole thing is more about giving the adults the life they want and not what is best for kids. Let's take these in turn.

First, one very common argument against same-sex couples adopting is that it is not natural. If God doesn't think two men or two women should be parents, then why should anyone else? (I'm not going to get into the whole separation of church and state thing here b/c my point is more about whether these arguments apply to infertile couples in addition to same sex couples.) At one point, this particular blog (which I won't link to b/c I don't want to send people there) said that it is "profoundly obvious" that couples that can't reproduce naturally have no business being parents.

I'm a person of faith. While I don't believe that God is moving us around like pieces on a checkerboard and organizing everything in our lives, I do think that our lives take a certain shape because God is present. So this is a hard thing for me to think about. Is God trying to send us a message that maybe we shouldn't be parents? Are our attempts to get pregnant through technology just a way to ignore this message?

There are a lot of shades of gray in my husband's and my journey with IF. So you could make the argument that we can reproduce, it's just very unlikely we would do so naturally. But what about my friends who have no usable eggs? Or my friends with husbands who have zero sperm? The truth is, I'm not sure how much difference people see between a same sex couple that can't reproduce and a hetero sex couple that can't reproduce. I mean, if you compare a lesbian couple to a couple with azoospermia, their basic reproductive difficulty is the lack of sperm between the two of them. So why do we say that one is fit to parent and the other is not?

This is not just an academic argument. Luckily I have not experienced this personally, but I know many of my IF friends have had people say straight out that maybe they are just not meant to be parents or maybe they should just listen to the message that nature/God is sending them and focus on something other than parenthood. And if I'm honest with myself, I've thought that in the deepest part of my brain.

And this is where we get to the second argument against same sex couples adopting that I think is tied to IF. Is the whole endeavor just about attaining our vision of what we want in life and the children involved just playthings for us? As expressed by opponents of same sex couples adopting, this is about gay rights, not about what is best for the children. While I don't agree that same sex couples are by definition less fit to be parents (and so the "it's not best for the children" is a red herring), I do see some truth to this argument. I am after all thinking of doing IUI and/or adopting because I want to be a mother. I don't like to think too much about the negative aspects of IUI (such as what happens if there are too many babies and thus the consequences for their health). And when I think of adopting, I think of bringing home a cute little newborn and say how great it is that I'm helping a kid in need. I don't think about adopting a toddler or older or a kid with special needs who are truly the children in need of good homes.

So part of me wonders that my passion for defending same sex couples in their ability to adopt stems from my own insecurities about IF and what it means for me. Should I listen to the message that maybe I'm not meant to be a mother? If I don't (because truly I don't want to), am I putting my own wants ahead of what is best for children? Regardless of what you think about same sex couples adopting, how do you all work through these questions?

Welcome ICLWers!

Welcome to visitors from ICLW! Here's a little bit about me.

The hubster and I have been married for 4 years and trying to conceive for just over one year. We started seeing an RE last January. I have ovulatory IF, which basically means unexplained. Our treatment so far has not been very aggressive, but we are working our way to IUI soon.

And I do have a life outside of IF. My job involves a lot of research, and I like to read and crochet in my spare time. Right now I spend a lot of time on my Wii Fit and watching HGTV.

Social security and IF treatments

As you can tell from my recent post, I've been thinking about IF and medical coverage and how much we should require insurance to cover.

Today I thought of a great reason why the rest of the country should care about our fertility: social security. For those of reading from other countries or those just unsure of how social security is funded, this is it works. Current workers (usually those age 18-65) pay taxes that then pay for benefits for current retirees (those 65 and older, but for us young'uns, we won't be eligible until age 67). One big problem with this method of funding social security is that life expectancy is increasing and birth rates are going down. This means the ratio of current workers to current retirees is going down. In just 8 years, the ratio is expected to be low enough that we will begin paying more out in benefits than it receives in benefits. In 2041 (conveniently just as I hit retirement age), the social security trust fund will run out of money and will only be able to pay 78 cents on the dollar for benefits we are expecting.

(By the way, I know this b/c today I received my yearly social security statement, so it's not like I have this info at the top of my head).

So, wouldn't an investment of $15,000 to pay for IF treatments help offset this declining ratio of current workers to retirees? If part of the problem is low birth rates, shouldn't we try to increase the birth rate? I mean, if the feds paid for us to have a baby, in 20 years or so that's one more worker who will surely pay more than $15K over the course of his/her working life in social security taxes to help fund social security.

To be honest, I'm not really sure if I'm half joking with this or not. When I first had this thought, I meant it as a joke. But now it's beginning to make sense.

Reproductive news

I don't know if there's been a spike in news related to reproductive issues or just that I notice them more now. But it seems every day there is a new article in the mainstream news about reproductive rights. The big news today, of course, was President Obama's executive order allowing stem cell research. This was a much needed victory for science and chances for finding cures to diseases like this one that affect my family.

There is also the recent bill in Georgia to restrict IVF. This bill is so short-sighted and I hope Georgian legislators don't cut many responsible women off from IVF just because of the media farce that is octomom.

Even American Idol has stories about fertility!

My personal favorite is from my own state. A state legislator proposed this bill which would create a constitutional amendment that says:

Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to a vasectomy. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding how and when a vasectomy may be obtained, especially related to situations involving the knowledge and consent of a spouse when the person requesting the vasectomy is married.

The wording of the bill suggests it is the legislator's tongue in cheek way of pointing out that this bill is just as ridiculous as a similar bill about abortion. Nothing like changing the state constitution so we can enact laws that can't be implemented due to Roe v Wade.

Now that we are realizing how difficult it will be for us to have a baby without assistance, we've begun talking about what steps exactly we are prepared to take. Things like IUI and IVF are no longer abstract concepts, but procedures we may actually use. Does that make me change my mind about them? No. I still think that couples have the right to make these decisions for themselves and if anything am coming to realize how difficult these decisions are. It just puts them in a different perspective.