Gender inequalities and reproductive medicine

by Hannah Newman

My partner and I began trying for children a long time ago. It wasn't working and I had this niggling feeling that it was not going to work. Call it a pessimistic streak; call it intuition which led me to seek some answers from the medical establishment. My GP decided that I presented symptoms which would explain the problems we were encountering. However, after 10 months undertaking every test under the sun it was clear that mine was a thoroughly ‘healthy body'.

Meanwhile my partner had been told by his (male) GP that reproductive issues generally lay with the female partner and that it was not worth him undergoing any tests. We accepted this for a while, preoccupied with my phantom ‘problems'. When my partner was tested and problems were identified in his sample his GP told him to ignore the results, and that our local hospital usually got these things wrong. So it wasn't until a year after our entry into the big bright world of medicine that we got to see a consultant, and were told my partners problems - slow moving sperm - were significant, and that the only option if we were to conceive was to have IVF, or rather a treatment called ICSI where eggs are directly injected with the partners sperm.

For me IVF was not an option. I personally saw this procedure as intrusive and unnatural, and didn't see as any less weird than cloning. Cue turmoil, cue despair. But time passed, my strength of feeling was mellowed by the opinions of others, and the overriding desire to be parents led us down this difficult path. During our first visits to the hospital I cried. What I was surrendering here was more than just my body, it was my sense of self. I felt I was becoming someone else.

We have just completed a cycle of ICSI. I kept positive whilst my healthy body was subjected to a seven week bombardment of intensive drug treatment. Firstly to block my hormone activity, sending me spiraling into a temporary menopause. Then to re-introduce the hormones that were previously active, but to levels far beyond the realms of good health. I produced 18 eggs - the equivalent of a year and a half of natural ovulating. One Saturday morning I rushed to hospital feeling short of breath - my ovaries were so swollen they were pressing against my diaphragm. The process was exhausting, but overall the reality that I experienced was surreal and confusing. Modern medicine had taken me from good health to this state of physical and emotional extremes.

So why was I treated for my partners symptoms? Though I have no medical knowledge it seems that a simple treatment could be invented to increase the motility of otherwise healthy sperm. It is not only that medicine automatically sees the female body as intrinsically problematic; by focusing on the female partner, medicine is undermining the male, implying that a man would not take responsibility for seeking and administering treatment. In this way medicine creates and compounds gender inequalities, and as a consequence approaches to ‘parenting' at the point before reproduction has even taken place.

I would really appreciate any views from anyone who has had similar experiences, or from medics who have any answers.