{"id":1409,"date":"2011-12-13T12:33:06","date_gmt":"2011-12-13T11:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=1409"},"modified":"2011-12-13T12:34:07","modified_gmt":"2011-12-13T11:34:07","slug":"a-philosopher-writes-on-her-own-infertility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2011\/12\/13\/a-philosopher-writes-on-her-own-infertility\/","title":{"rendered":"A Philosopher Writes on her own Infertility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at Feminist Philosophers, there&#8217;s a great little series of posts by an anonymous female philosopher about her experience of becoming infertile.\u00a0 It&#8217;s well worth a read: part 1 is <a href=\"http:\/\/feministphilosophers.wordpress.com\/2011\/11\/30\/on-becoming-infertile-part-1\/\">here<\/a>; part 2 <a href=\"http:\/\/feministphilosophers.wordpress.com\/2011\/12\/02\/on-becoming-infertile-part-2\/\">here<\/a>; and part 3 <a href=\"http:\/\/feministphilosophers.wordpress.com\/2011\/12\/04\/on-becoming-infertile-part-3-final\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to take the liberty of reproducing the penultimate paragraph:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>My partner and I <em>are<\/em> a family. We are a childless family, but that doesn\u2019t make our family any less real or legitimate.\u00a0 The implication that people who don\u2019t have children don\u2019t have families \u2013 don\u2019t have parents and siblings, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, partners, friends, pets \u2013 is beyond insulting. \u00a0People have sometimes clarified their comment by saying that they were talking about a \u201cnuclear family\u201d (whatever that means).\u00a0 But just as I have an extended family, I also have a nuclear family.\u00a0 We are simply a family of two, rather than some n greater than two.\u00a0 Likewise, people without children and without romantic partners have nuclear families just as much as I do \u2013 those families are simply composed a little differently than my own.\u00a0 Whatever child-bearing abilities infertile women may lack, they do not lack <em>families<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes!\u00a0 There&#8217;s lots of ways to have a family.\u00a0 Sometimes it involves a genetic link; sometimes a gestational one; sometimes a genetic <em>and<\/em> gestational one.\u00a0 But it doesn&#8217;t have to.\u00a0 A person can have kids that are neither genetic nor gestational; or they can not have kids at all.\u00a0 <em>And they&#8217;re all possible\u00a0ways of having a family<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>And in that case, the surgeons mentioned in part 1 who suggested deferring surgery in order to preserve the chance of having a family&#8230; well, they were just plain wrong.\u00a0 Doubtless well-intentioned, but plain wrong.<\/p>\n<p>(Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newappsblog.com\/2011\/12\/a-female-philosopher-on-becoming-infertile.html\">Catarina<\/a> for the pointer.)<!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at Feminist Philosophers, there&#8217;s a great little series of posts by an anonymous female philosopher about her experience of becoming infertile.\u00a0 It&#8217;s well worth a read: part 1 is here; part 2 here; and part 3 here. I&#8217;m going to take the liberty of reproducing the penultimate paragraph: My partner and I are a [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2011\/12\/13\/a-philosopher-writes-on-her-own-infertility\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1240,2022],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogosphere","category-reproduction"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Philosopher Writes on her own Infertility - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2011\/12\/13\/a-philosopher-writes-on-her-own-infertility\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Philosopher Writes on her own Infertility - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over at Feminist Philosophers, there&#8217;s a great little series of posts by an anonymous female philosopher about her experience of becoming infertile.\u00a0 It&#8217;s well worth a read: part 1 is here; part 2 here; and part 3 here. 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