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Friday, November 09, 2007

Twelve and a Half Fighting Back

The twelve-and-a-half are the 12.5% of the population experiencing infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss. According to the CDC, infertility is a medically recognized disease that affects 7.3 million men and women in our country. Infertility is a crisis that is increasing in magnitude over time. The largest growing population within infertility is women under 35.

But infertility is not a women's issue. It is a medical crisis affecting men and women equally. It affects those married or unmarried, gay or straight, young or old. It is a crisis that crosses into every religion, nationality, ethnicity, and race.

12.5% of the population is too large a swath of people to be ignored. If you need a human voice to bring light to this issue, click on any of the links below to be taken to a personal story about the financial impact of infertility.

1. Making Toy Soldiers (Roy)
2. Our Journey (Bonnie)
3. Or, life is a bed of roses (Tracy)
4. The Idle Mind of Beth (Beth)
5. Entrusted (Andrea)
6. The Infertile Long and Winding Road (Ms. Infertile)
7. Are We There Yet? (Kami)
8. Sticky Bean Preconception Journal (Kristen)
9. In Search of Biscuit 2.0 (Linda)
10. Life in the South (Just a Girl)
11. Are We There Yet?! (Sandra)
12. Infertile Fantasies (Bea)
13. Empty Uterus Syndrome (La La)
14. A Day in the Life of a Moody Person (Rian)
15. Sanity Now (PCOSMama)
16. I Won't Fear Love (Julia)
17. Vacant Uterus (Flicka)
18. Stirrup Queens (Melissa)
19. Hopefully Hoping (Nessa)
20. Coming2Terms (Pamela Jeanne)
21. My Many Blessings (Tina)
22. Blissfully Bitchy (Amy)
23. Sibling for Celia (Shelby)
24. Summertime (Summer)
25. Overachievers Seek Baby (Kellg)
26. The Island (Sara S-P)
27. Oscar Needs a Playmate (Jackie)
28. Fertility Stories (Rachel)
29. Serenity Now! (Serenity)
30. Waiting Womb (Larisa)
31. Cheese and Whine (J)
32. One Hardy Swimmer (Tracy)
33. Trying (Sarah)
34. Jenn's Journal (Jenn)
35. Unwellness (Bri)
36. Probably Boring Ramblings (Jenny)
37. The Life of Nancy (Nancy)
38. One More Week (Annie)
39. The Road Less Travelled (Loribeth)
40. Judecorp (Judecorp)
41. Hez in IVFland (Hez)
42. The Dunn Family (Erica)
43. Forever Reaching (NYCPhoenix)
44. Within the Woods (Suz)
45. Wifethereof (Thewifethereof)
46. Hydrangeas Are Pretty (Shelli)
47. Liza Was Here (Liza)
48. Good Times Good Times (T)
49. Southern Infertility (Samantha)
50. The Egg Drop Post (EDP)
many more coming soon...

Want to Participate?

This project continues to be open indefinitely (it's never too late to add your story) and anyone in the infertility/pregnancy loss/adoption community (in other words, all 1000 blogs on the blogroll as well as all the ones I haven't found yet) can be a blogtavist on this project. Use your sliver of the Internet to bring attention to the issues affecting us right now--especially the ones senators and congresspeople can address and affect while in office.

Create and post a description of your own experience with infertility/pregnancy loss/adoption highlighting either what having insurance coverage or adoption benefits allowed you to do or how your story could have been different with mandated coverage. Talk as if you do have your representative's ear for a moment: what would you want him/her to know about your experience? Shorter is better--try to keep your story down to 4 paragraphs. Email me the link whenever you post.

Looking for another way to make a difference? Head over to Flicka's blog for the letter writing campaign. Stay tuned--more blogtavism to come during this pre-election time. If you want to receive information about Twelve and a Half Fighting Back as it unfolds, send an email to me with "add me to the THFB mailing list" in the subject line.

8 comments:

Geohde said...

Hiya there Mel,

I'm planning a post on the above, although I'm not in the US. Not sure if that matters, but I don't want to draw the focus of the argument into how one should srtucture a health system?

Oh, and I voted for you :)

J

Serenity said...

I posted today - please add me! :)

Anonymous said...

I did mine yesterday: http://jennsjournal.clubmom.com/jennsjournal/2007/11/my-story.html

Anonymous said...

Very timely. Having run out of frozen embryos, I am seriously contemplating another DE cycle. Donor rates have gone up, though I thank G-d that in my part of the country, it is still relatively inexensive -- about $5,000 for the donor's fee and the egg broker's fee. Another $8,700 or so for the clinic to retrieve the eggs, do the transfer, and supervise the cyle. And then about another $7,000 or so for the donor's medications and monitoring. Again, thank G-d that my insurance isn't questioning why I need the drugs or the monitoring, so it has been covered, at least for my FETs.

And then? One of the potential donors is not from the area, so I learned that if we liked her, we would have to add her room and board for the duration to the cost. I don't think so!

It just gives my husband and I more things to fight about, I guess.

Briar said...

i posted:
http://www.unwellness.com/unwellness/2007/11/what-it-cost-us.html

Anonymous said...

http://nycphoenix.wordpress.com/2007/11/10/being-12-and-a-half/

thanks so much

Anonymous said...

I finally posted mine today - not TOO late, geesh.

Anonymous said...

I posted too (a little slow to this I know, but I found it hard to contemplate).
http://veeandjay.wordpress.com/a-catalogue-of-our-disasters-in-chronological-order/

We're in the UK, so not much use in terms of addressing the American healthcare system, but here, pretty much without exception, we (same-sex couples) cannot get ANY treatment for free on our National Health Service, unless a clear infertility factor is identified. We cannot generally qualify as "sub-fertile" and get treatment either - it's pay all the way.