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Getting beyond the fact that I usually start twitching when someone sends me something from the New York Times, all the more violently when the byline comes from Stephanie Saul who insists that it's a good idea to use the wrong terminology when discussing fertility treatments, I couldn't help but read the series of articles about multiple births and fertility treatments. Unlike others, I did not bother to click on the accompanying comments because I am familiar enough with the New York Times to know that nothing good can come of reading the opinions of people who see nothing wrong with the fact that their newspaper is wrongly using the term implant in regards to embryos.
You can't argue with the meat of the articles, the first of which can be boiled down to the thesis that multiples increase the risk of prematurity, and therefore, protocols should be in place to discourage practices that would lead to a higher chance of multiples. A pretty sound idea. The second article covers the topic of selective reduction and how IUIs lead to higher order multiples because there is less control than IVF. Again, no one can dispute that fact. A third roundtable discussion covers again the problem with multiple births.
Of course these articles were of interest to me as a mother of twins who were conceived with the help of fertility treatments. They were delivered seven weeks prematurely when they stopped growing in-utero and there was deeply discordant growth. They spent three weeks in the NICU and have been generally healthy with some lingering problems of prematurity. Obviously, I'm one of the target audiences for these articles and you would think that I would have nodded my head a bit more since they do bring up tangentially ideas that I firmly believe.
But the problem begins with the fact that Saul never convinces me that she wants to hold a frank discussion, working together via journalism to solve the problem of multiple births and prematurity in regards to fertility treatments. Instead, the language used, the stories told, and the facts addressed all point to the fact that Saul never closely examines the solutions, instead choosing to only address the problems--and missing the point entirely in the process.
Instead of focusing on reasons why people would risk the transfer of multiple embryos, practicing sound journalism where she would interview numerous subjects and utilize their words to present the story, Saul jumps to conclusions: "patients are eager for children" and they want "to be successful on the first try." But rather than state the real reason why women wouldn't want to undergo more fertility treatments than necessary--money and physical pain--time is given as a factor.
Anyone who has paid out of pocket for a chance to conceive knows that there are two main reasons why people take risks with treatments and they are very closely aligned to the reason why people take risks with any medical treatment--especially one that is tied to quality of life. First and foremost, the exorbitant cost of treatments--mostly uncovered by insurance--goes towards a chance rather than a child. Few have the ability to do treatments until they work. Most need to take risks in order to feasibly pay the high price of family building (and for the love, before you suggest adoption, please first understand the cost of adoption and why it isn't a solution to infertility but instead a wonderful, separate family building option).
Secondly, anyone who has been on the receiving end of a needle knows that you try to complete as few cycles as possible to conceive both due to the physical discomfort associated with treatments as well as the overall health risks that can come from doing treatments. There are times when the risks of prematurity and multiples balances out the risks of doing multiple treatments for both the woman's mental and physical health.
Saul reveals her bias early on (as if she hasn't already done so in the past with her other articles concerning infertility), calling it the "fertility industry," a term used by others to greater impact because it is backed by ideas rather than used unsupported as a slur. We don't call it the cancer industry, implying that people are being churned through like cans of creamed corn or automobile parts. We don't imply that people are being moved through the medical factories mindlessly like
