Fertility Treatments
Did y'all read about this?
Smokers, lesbians, and single women, but not fat women or women over 40, would be allowed to get fertility treatment through the National Health Service under recommendations from the British Fertility Society. The cutoff is a body mass index of 36. Rationales: 1) "Obese women are less likely to get pregnant and more likely to encounter health problems." 2) "The NHS is already stopping women who are obese from having fertility treatment," so let's make it official. Fertility Society's view: "Continued inequality of access to treatment is unacceptable in a state-funded health service." Cynic's view: Evidently, some inequalities are more unequal than others.
I don't tend to spend a lot of blog time complaining about the policies of governments that are not my own, but this is, no doubt, on its way to the US.
And one more thing: what about the severely underweight women (often celebrities and trophy wife types) who are VERY likely to get fertility treatments and also very likely to encounter health problems?
posted by EL @ 2:50 PM
3 Comments:
Not to mention that a common cause of infertility, polycystic ovarian syndrome, also leads to obesity among other things. That's just sad and wrong. I hope they reconsider their policy.
Good point, Karen.
You know, I wrote about this same issue the other day, with the basic point that conservative outlooks on sex that rely on physical harm to keep people from having sex certainly are no stand-in for ethics. People are fighting to maintain the physical risks of sex because they can't think of any other reason kids won't be fucking nonstop. That's a pathetic failulre of imagination, especially considering the way they'll sacrifice the flesh and blood of others to keep living with an unexamined sexual ethic.
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