From Tim Rutten's Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times today:
Now, I cringe at Nadya Suleman and her situation, but reading this op-ed, equating her actions with those of every woman struggling with infertility, infuriates me."When the Nadya Sulemans of the world say, as she has in interviews, that they undergo these extreme, invasive, unpleasant, uncertain and expensive medical procedures because they "want children," that isn't really the case. If what people want is children...there are tens of thousands of children in our country and perhaps millions more abroad waiting for adoption. Thousands of others in our country are waiting for foster care.
The impulse that has made fertility medicine such a large and lucrative specialty in American medicine is about something other than children; it's about the narcissistic assumption that one is "entitled" to "the experience" of childbearing and, more to the point, the notion that, somehow, if your particular strands of DNA don't live on into another generation, the species will be poorer for it.That sense of entitlement and its enabling delusion are about a lot of things -- but none of them really involve children."
Infertiles, what say you about Mr. Rutten's words?
Feeling selfish? Entitled? Chock full of narcissistic assumptions? Because really, if we can't conceive children without medical assistance, we should just adopt, right?
Please leave your thoughts below - narcissistic, entitled, and otherwise.
Mo
Posts
