by Stoneheart

Created on: February 27, 2009   Last Updated: March 04, 2009

Does a woman have the right to undergo infertility treatments to have more children? Unquestionably, yes.

Should a woman with children undergo infertility treatments to have more children? No!

In a world where every person is happily independent and totally self-sufficient, where families are able and willing to successfully care for every member, a question about whether or not a woman should bear any number of children, by any means, would be without reason.

Our world, however, is not such a world.

In our world, the ramifications of a woman's decision to bear even one child range beyond her or a mate she might have.

Prisons overflow with children and adults who were children born of mothers unable or unwilling to provide their children with the kind of guidance and upbringing necessary for a child to become an adult capable of self-discipline, anger control and productivity.

Students who are children of women unready to be mothers struggle and fail in schools from Kindergarten through high school.

Corners, store fronts, alleyways and worse are the homes of children born to women who may have wanted them before they were born but not afterwards.

Sex slaves were once children born of women who didn't keep them from slavery.

Unmarked graves are occupied by children abandoned, in spirit if not in fact, by their mothers.

Life between the womb and anonymous death can bring a child to god-damn their mother for giving birth, to wish for death to end a worse than miserable life.

Obsessed and oppressed can be the lives of children who perceive themselves to be second-class and unwanted, test-tube babies living in the shadow of natural brothers and sisters, in doubt about what and who they are.

The life of a child wanted by a mother, by a father, by brothers and sisters can be wondrous, so fulfilling and rewarding that, as that life nears its end, thoughts of all days before bring only a smile. Tempting is the thought that this is the life that will certainly follow a birth.

I am not a woman and cannot even pretend to know how a women feelings or thinks about much of anything, particularly child bearing.

I am of an age that I believe women do, at the most basic levels, feel and think differently than men. I'm thankful for this and that I was never taught or, as you please, brainwashed to believe otherwise.

I believe that a woman who bears none, one or many children in the course of her life was meant by her god or by Mother Nature to bear this many children.

I believe a woman who feels that she should not have any child or any more children should not have them. Her body is her body. Her sense of herself can, better than any law or other dictate, determine whether or not she should be a mother or that her children should have a smaller share of her.

I believe a woman who has children and so strong a need to have more children that she will undergo infertility treatments to have more children has a need unfulfilled by her children, a tragedy for them. She believes she can be satisfied only by again giving birth, by creating a life not to create a life but for some other reason.

Children are not playthings or adult pacifiers. They should not be brought into our world because someone simply, "wants," a child. Infertility treatment for any women with children is, for me, solely a matter of want. The desire or need for another child is more important than the child that could be born, which is alone a reason not to bear the child.

The decision to undergo infertility treatment to have an additional child is a roll of the dice and unacceptable risk to the child who would be.

Whether or not a woman has any children or more children should be a matter of her own personal biology not infertility treatments.

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