From news about the Trump administration’s insulting potential strategies to incentivize women to have more babies to dire headlines about abortion bans increasing infant and maternal mortality, there’s no shortage of depressing — if not downright dystopian — reproductive health stories for journalists to follow and write.
And while we have a responsibility to inform the public, clarify scientific and medical misinformation and hold policymakers accountable, we don’t have to do so at the expense of the many other stories about modern family building, panelists said during an April event hosted by AHCJ’s New York Chapter, along with the Science Writers of New York and the storytelling platform pregnantish.
The panel, which I moderated in honor of National Infertility Awareness Week, featured writers, infertility advocates and doctors who shared personal experiences and expert insight to give journalists fresh ideas and sources for their coverage of reproductive health. The panelists included:
Here are some of the takeaways of our discussion.
Hopeful stories can be highly engaging
Devastating headlines aren’t the only way to attract readers (or listeners or viewers). On the pregnantish website and podcast, for example, Syrtash has told a wide range of fascinating stories like how figure skating champion Tara Lipinski became a mom after five years struggling to conceive and why a woman used her late husband’s sperm to try to have a baby.
Syrtash said she recently followed three single female friends in their 40s who shared an embryo donation so they could raise genetic half-siblings. I’ve worked with Syrtash in the past, too, on jaw-dropping stories like a man whose 61-year-old mom gave birth to his biological child.
“These stories jump off the page, jump off the internet, so my big message [on this subject of] dystopian headlines is: You can still write thrilling content with modern family-building stories that people will click on that are not sad, but so inspiring,” Syrtash said.
Strimel Bentley added that she speaks out about her experience because she would have liked to see stories like hers while facing cancer and chemotherapy-induced infertility. “People need to hear these stories to keep going,” she said.
Language matters
As journalists, we know our word choices matter. But it can be tough to keep up with the most appropriate terms when describing personal (and highly emotional) health issues.
Jackson-Bey said she doesn’t like the term “designer baby,” for one, to describe processes like screenings for chromosomal abnormalities or genetic disorders. “No one’s picking eye color, no one’s picking tall blonde babies,” she said. Rather than the fun, privileged activity that the term implies, figuring out which eggs, sperm, or embryos to use when going through assisted reproductive technology can be “kind of agonizing for some couples, who think, ‘How do we make it look like what we thought our children were going to look like?’” Jackson-Bey said.
Surrogacy is also a ripe area for insensitive commentary, Syrtash and Strimel Bentley agreed. For example, the carrier is the “surrogate” — not the surrogate “mom.” And people who pursue surrogacy don’t do so out of laziness or vanity. “I would have paid 8 bajillion dollars to carry my son,” Strimel Bentley said.
Use your platform to educate
Even terms readers think they know, like IVF, are worth explaining. For example, while “assisted reproductive technology,” or ART, encompasses a broad range of interventions to help people have kids, “in vitro fertilization,” or IVF, specifically refers to an egg and sperm being mixed outside of the body before being implanted in a uterus.
“I cannot tell you how many times I’m doing a basic biology lesson for adults,” Jackson-Bey said. “It gets a little dicey because of what is happening on the national stage — we’re reducing education, we’re reducing access to women’s rights and the right for school systems or colleges to even offer certain classes, and I think that’s going to have a worsening impact in the public.” Journalists can help fill the gaps.
Simoni also emphasized the importance of educating people on age as a real limiting factor in fertility, despite headlines featuring celebrities becoming parents in their 50s. He believes fertility care should be preventative medicine, allowing doctors to diagnose issues that can affect fertility like endometriosis long before a person considers parenthood.
“One of the things about age is you’re fighting against the clock, and whether that means treatment takes time, surgery takes time, recovery takes time — all these things take time, and so if you start late, you’re really pushing it,” he said. “If we can just get to you sooner, we might actually have a chance.”
Keep an eye on underreported trends
If you’re interested in trends in fertility medicine outside of declining birth rates, here’s one: Women are freezing their eggs at younger ages as insurance coverage for the process increases, Jackson Bey said. While that’s generally a positive shift, she added, “sometimes it feels a little bit exploitative that only the people who are in jobs at these big companies get to have this service which…should be available to everyone.”
Find stories about military veterans, for example, who take jobs at Starbucks for the fertility benefits. “It is a travesty to me that you could commit your life in this way to the country and then you come home and you don’t have access to basic health care, and to me, this is basic health care,” Jackson-Bey said. “Young soldiers, maybe they need fertility preservation before we send them out into battle…and that is not currently the way that it’s set up.”
Panelists also noted other trends like people from some southern states — where “personhood laws” deem even frozen embryos children with human rights — seeking fertility care in places like New York. Don’t overlook infertility stories on a global scale, either. “Whether you’re in Zimbabwe or Chicago or anywhere, the pain point is very much the same,” Syrtash said.
Feature underrepresented populations
A popular image of infertility has long been a white woman in her 40s finally having a baby thanks to IVF. But infertility affects all races and gender identities. In fact, male factor infertility is present in nearly 50% of infertility cases among heterosexual couples. Black women, often stereotyped as hyper-fertile, are more likely than white women to experience infertility — and less likely to get help. Trans people seek fertility care, too. “There are so many rich stories to tell as journalists of what infertility looks like, and that will help educate people as to why more people need to access it,” Syrtash said.
