Infertility Mandates and the Politics of Inequality

• In Event: Political Institutions, Policies, and Public Health

Abstract

Although infertility mandate policies have been implemented since the late 1980s and continue to be debated and reformed in state legislatures and Congress, most scholarly attention has been paid to the effects of mandates on birth rates and reproductive technology use. There has been little attention to other dimensions of infertility experiences in the context of infertility mandates, particularly psychological experiences, financial practices, and multidimensional measures of medical helpseeking. How do these experiences vary by race and socioeconomic status, particularly in states with infertility mandates? Using results from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers, a nationally representative survey of 4,712 women between 2007 and 2010, this article examines the psychological, economic, and medical helpseeking experiences of women across race and class in the context of infertility mandate policy ([dataset]National Survey of Fertility Barriers 2010). As the health politics of geographical and socioeconomic location are determinative of health care more broadly across the US, this article proposes policy reforms by which the multiple and complex lived experiences of infertility must be taken into account to improve infertility mandate policy approaches, namely through Jamila Michener’s (2017) framework of “people-based” and “place-based” policy reform around infertility in the US states.

Authors

• Erin Heidt-Forsythe, Pennsylvania State University

• Heather Silber Mohamed, Clark University