I want all of you who have children to come with me on a little journey across the Great Divide.  It doesn’t matter if your children are yours through successful fertility treatment, donor egg, adoption, or surrogacy.  If you were one of the lucky one who popped the cork, lit the candles, and ended up with a baby nine months later, come along with us, but bring your imagination.

  • Remember what it was like when you were one of the “have nots” looking across the Great Divide between those with kids and those desperately wanting kids.
  • Remember the feelings of wishing, hoping, and likely a healthy dose of rage?
  • Remember your life revolving around the calendar:
    ~your moods alternating from hope to despair depending on where you were in your cycle.
    ~your lovemaking becoming a mechanical chore reserved for the days when it would really count.
    ~business trips and vacations carefully planned to maximize “exposure” during your fertile time
  • Remember the shock of learning you were capable of unbelievable jealously at the easy conception of friends and family.

OK, our little trip down memory lane is over. You’re safely back on the comfortable side of the Great Divide.  You can luxuriate in that delicious smell of a baby fresh from his bath.  You can enjoy the camaraderie you feel with other harried mothers of toddlers.  You can secretly thrill at being the Reading Mom in your kid’s class.   You can look forward to the next several months of hiding Easter Eggs, preparing a Passover dinner for your family complete with well-scrubbed and hopefully well-behaved children, and receiving a Mother’s Day card signed with a crayon.

But while you go about enjoying your much deserved child filled life, please, please don’t forget those who still dwell in the land of the have nots across the Great Divide.  Never has it been so important for us “haves” to remember.  A spate of recent legislation has been introduced  that will imperil the availability of infertility treatment for the have nots, including eight states (Montana, Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Iowa, Georgia, Mississippi, and likely Colorado) that have introduced so-called “personhood” legislation or ballot referendums that potentially would make in vitro fertilization (IVF) illegal.  It’s hard to know whether the legislators intended to strike a blow at those who suffer from infertility or whether their aim was at abortion and infertility treatment was caught in the crossfire.  Regardless their aim, the results are the same.

What can you do?  If you live in one of the eight states, write your legislators. If you have friends or family in one of those states, ask them to write their legislators.  The Resolve website has all the information you need to understand the issue and who to contact.  (Resolve only includes the legislation and referendums that have a good chance of passing.)  If you don’t live in the state, don’t write because nothing incites local legislators more than having some know-it-all from out of state tell them how to govern. Do, however, sign up for the Resolve Advocacy Alerts.  And do consider joining the great folks on the Resolve Advocacy Committee in Washington DC  for Infertility Advocacy Day, May 5, 2011.

Those who suffer from infertility should not have to stand alone.  It’s a disease, not a life style choice–DARNIT!!  At the very least, those who have crossed the Great Divde should stand with those left behind.

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