{"id":121,"date":"2009-08-09T22:33:35","date_gmt":"2009-08-09T22:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/08\/a-question-about-infertility.html"},"modified":"2009-08-09T22:33:35","modified_gmt":"2009-08-09T22:33:35","slug":"a-question-about-infertility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/08\/a-question-about-infertility.html","title":{"rendered":"A Question About Infertility"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came across this infertility post<\/a> today. In it, the author, Melissa Ford, questioned a Dear Abby column responding to a reader on the subject of financing infertility. Ford found Dear Abby’s <\/a>response to be ignorant.<\/p>\n

The reader was asking for Abby’s thoughts on holding a fundraiser to raise money for infertility treatments. Personally I think that may<\/i> be stretching the limits of your friends and families’ love and generosity, but I agree with Ford and thought the advice given was incredibly insensitive:

“My heart goes out to you, but my gut reaction is negative. If you needed donations for treatment for a life-threatening condition, I might feel differently. I encourage you to explore other options available to you — including adoption.”<\/i><\/p>\n

I know absolutely nothing about the emotional pain and heartache that infertility can cause, but I couldn’t believe that an advice columnist would be so dismissive about such a heart-wrenching topic.<\/p>\n

Then I had a little moment of self-awareness. I remembered a conversation I had not that long ago with a friend
\nwho was kind enough to catch me up on the whole Jon and Kate saga. My
\nreaction to the whole mess was astonishment that they had been blessed
\nwith two healthy children and still had spent oodles of money on having
\nmore. <\/p>\n


\nAfter reading Ford’s post, I gave myself a bit of a mental kick my own
\nignorant and thoughtless words in the past. After all, how dare I judge
\nanyone for their desire to have children? Still, there’s a wealth of
\ndifference in questioning the ethics of spending huge sums of money on
\nyour third child and spending that same amount of money on your
\nfirst…isn’t there?<\/p>\n

I’m not sure. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a long way from having a
\nchild.  God-willing, I very much hope to have a family one day. If I’m
\nunable to have children, then I also hope I’ll have the means to seek
\nother options. But if I have two children, I think I might stop while I
\nwas ahead. <\/p>\n

Tell me, do you think there is an ethical line to be drawn? At what
\npoint is it out of line to have a child under any conditions? Do we ever reach that point? Was it okay for the original reader to ask for assistance in funding treatments for a first child as opposed to her second or
\nthird?<\/b>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across this infertility post today. In it, the author, Melissa Ford, questioned a Dear Abby column responding to a reader on the subject of financing infertility. Ford found Dear Abby’s response to be ignorant. The reader was asking for Abby’s thoughts on holding a fundraiser to raise money for infertility treatments. 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In addition to writing for a various print and online publications, such as Parenting Magazine and iVillage, she was the Website Manager for the Henry Street Settlement, a social services and arts organization serving Manhattan's Lower East Side. Most recently, she worked on the Thai-Myanmar border as a writer for the Burma Human Rights Yearbook. Her curiosity about human nature, coupled with duel streaks of idealism and Midwestern pragmatism, developed into an ongoing discussion with friends, family and strangers on ethical quandaries. When she's not asking \"Why?\" you might have trouble finding her, as her hobbies include nosing around used bookstores, exploring the world (near and far), meeting new people and occasionally twiddling her thumbs while daydreaming.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/pmangunta"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}