Still, in the real world, there is a need for a solution: Who has the higher ground, those who would do whatever is needed at whatever cost to conceive? Or those who contend that if a baby cannot be conceived in the usual way, nothing further should be done, whether for religious or ecological reasons?
One solution, obviously, is to refrain from classifying infertility as a disability. That would save enormous amounts of insurance money and also prevent the need for government to support infertility treatments through Medicaid or other entitlement programs. If a woman or couple wanted treatment, they would have to pay for it themselves in this case, which would doubtless limit treatment to the well to do. That, of course, opens the issue of economic fairness in an open Western-style society.
A better solution is refusal to refuse to classify infertility as a disability, and to also mount a campaign to ensure that all the nation's (even the globe's) already existing children and their parents are covered by basic health insurance/medical access so that true disabilities -- those that prevent moving, communicating and breathing -- are addressed first. Once unnecessary death from such causes had decreased, and life-altering disabilities were diminished as far as possible, then...
Granted, this path would require the intense re-education of millions of spoiled Americans (and others in the G-8 nations) who use situation ethics as an excuse for allowing their mentality to be compromised by the state of their reproductive tubing to the point of demanding 'treatment' for a condition that is as old and the hills and as normal to the Earth's population as the ability to breathe oxygen.
References
Duin, J. (1999) Reckless reproduction? Insight on the News 15(26), 41. Accessed 7 July 2005 at www.questia.com.
Infertility. (2005) National Center for Health Statistics. Accessed 7 July 2005 at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/fertile.htm
Kaminer, W. (2000) Reproductive entitlement. The American Prospect 11(10), 14. Accessed 7 July 2005 at www.questia.com.
Platell, a. (2004) Nobody has the right to be a mother: Amanda Platell explains why fertility treatment is not for her, the New Statesman, 133(4673), 29. Accessed 7 July 2005 at www.questia.com.
Reproductive tourism. (2004) the Wilson Quarterly 28(2), 103. Accessed 7 July 2005 at www.questia.com
Taylor, R. (1999) Reproductive medicine and ethics. Free Inquiry, 19(2), 55+. Accessed…
