“I had gone into this process hoping to find our embryos a loving family. But now we were finding a loving family for ourselves, too.”
IVF
How a DNA Testing Kit Revealed a Family Secret Hidden for 54 Years
A personal essay by memoirist Dani Shapiro about discovering, accidentally through DNA testing, that the father she knew was not her biological parent. In the piece she advocates for the rights of children produced through assisted reproduction, after decades in which those of parents and donor prevailed, and children were kept in the dark about […]
Dress You Up in My Love
Doree Shafrir reflects on how Halloween changed for her after struggling with infertility.
From One Friendship, Lessons on Life, Death, AIDS, and Childlessness
S. Kirk Walsh reflects on her friendship with a gay man battling AIDS — how he taught her to grieve her own infertility, and live life more fully.
Katie O’Reilly on the Downsides to Donating Your Eggs
For a brief while in my late twenties, I toyed with selling my eggs. In the end, I was afraid of having the procedure, of what the fertility drugs might do to me—and the idea of having offspring out in the world whom I might never know. (I was afraid enough of having offspring I […]