PEDIATRICS Vol. 93 No. 4 April 1994, pp. 646
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IS THERE A "RIGHT" OF PARENTHOOD?

A woman was enraged (recently) because her health insurance company, after paying for two unsuccessful attempts at in vitro fertilization, had refused to reimburse her for further infertility treatments. "They're depriving me of my right to become a mother," she said, "and I'm going to sue them."

But where is it written that our society owes everyone the "right" to become a parent, regardless of the financial or ethical cost?...

Almost no one has questioned the notion of parenthood as a right and infertility as a disaster that must be fought with all the high-tech tools of modern medicine . . . but when infertility is viewed simply as one misfortune on a scale of sorrows—less horrible, say, than mind destroying diseases or mass starvation—the ethical balance looks quite different.