Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Anyone Who Wants To Be A Parent, Can Be?

During some of my online reading and research, this news story caught my attention.  Although I have lived in Idaho for the past year, my life up until then was spent in Utah.  Maybe that's why it hit close to home.

The current Mrs. Utah is a woman who has struggled with infertility and multiple miscarriages.  She has been able to give birth to two healthy children and has plans to continue fertility treatments to grow her family.  Part of her platform as Mrs. Utah is to educate the public about infertility, which I love.  She talks about her involvement with the Utah Fertility Center and how they are putting on seminars together to educate the public.

The part that rubs me the wrong way is at the end of the article where she says that "anyone who wants to be a parent can be".  There was no discussion at all about adoption or what happens if your health issues make it impossible to become pregnant, only about pursuing fertility treatments.  The fact remains that there are some people who will never get pregnant, no matter how hard they try.  And what about adoption?  Adoption has been an amazing way of having many, many, many children join their forever families.  Why not at least mention it as an option?

However, if you feel that adoption is not right for you, or if you are trying to adopt and haven't been successful, there are many cases where no matter how badly you want to be a parent, you aren't.  So, while I'm glad that Mrs. Utah is trying to bring awareness to infertility, I feel like her statement was wrong and possibly hurtful.  What do you think?

1 comment:

Nancy Prater said...

I agree with you. There is a couple in my parent's ward who, despite fertility treatments, are unable to conceive, and they are unable to adopt because of poor choices that the husband made in his youth affecting their adoption eligibility. Today both husband and wife are wonderful people, making great choices, but they will never be able to have kids, and they want kids really badly. Her statement isn't correct, and I know to this couple, would be considered hurtful.