I know that NOW and Planned Parenthood strive for greater “reproductive rights” but how come I only hear about abortions from them? Do they push legislation for greater access to low cost infertility treatments? I looked on their sites and see brief mentions in their charters/mission statements about fertility, but I honestly can’t remember seeing marches on DC for cheap IVF procedures or hearing about lobbyists pushing Congress to make fertility drugs readily available.
Can anyone please provide me with examples of this?
I had a whole big long post written but I think what it all comes down to is the media. You really only hear things about these places when the media mentions them, and they only mention things that are newsworthy (ie firebombing the clinic IS newsworthy, someone sitting down and writting a nice letter to thank them for helping them out with a pelvic exam when they where strapped for cash…not so newsworthy.
They pick their battles. It’s highly unlikely that fertility treatments will be made illegal, but it’s always possible abortion will.
Actually, if it ever got to the point where fertility treatments were made illegal, odds are a theocratic government will have banned abortion long before.
This may also be related to the distinction between economic issues and policy issues. As alluded to above, legal barriers to most fertility treatments are not an issue. Cost, however, may be. But as expensive as fertility treatment is, it is still less than the cost of raising a child. Subsidizing treatments that will allow people to have children they can’t afford is an uphill battle. For those fertility treatments that may be legally controversial due to legal rights to embryos or similar issues, I would expect Planned Parenthood and NOW to be generally on the side of the people wanting to reproduce.
Speaking economically of abortion, moral issues aside, it is somewhat of an opposite situation. If abortion is not legal and affordable, some people who can’t afford children will have them. Also, clearly there are many people who do want to put legal barriers to abortion in place, and PP and NOW lobby against those legal barriers.
In summary, rights to bear children are under few legal threats and make a very unattractive economic case, so lobbying for them is rather limited.
They’ve been involved in promoting safe contraception, opposing restrictions to access to contraception and birth control info (especially back when that was more of an issue), and exposing forms of contraception which appear to be risky to women’s health (especially where those risks looked like they were being glossed over).
I’m pretty sure they’ve gone to bat for non-married women, lesbian women, etc, to receive in vitro fertilization treatment.