That's ART as in Assisted Reproductive Technology. The major media are covering issues concerning assisted reproductive technology, and they are frankly getting it wrong more than they're getting it right. What's troubling is that few of their readers know that they're receiving misinformation unless they themselves are fertility patients or friends or family members of fertility patients. And the media's power over public attitudes toward assisted reproduction is enormous, since after all, most of us who aren't actually patients learn most of what we ostensibly know through news outlets and other media sources. I know I did, and I cringe at the beliefs I held before I actually tried to conceive through fertility treatment.
This is a place for clarification and discussion of ART issues, as well as the expanding possibilities for motherhood and how those are defying cultural norms. I am not an MD. My training is in law and computer technology, not medicine -- or psychology or reproductive biology or any of the other disciplines where the subject matter might lead me. If anyone who is an expert in those fields has a credible and educated difference with me, I will probably defer. But I would ask those whose opinions on the subject are based in religious bias, agism, that strange secular faith that many seem to have that they know "what nature intended," a conviction that all procreation is a burden on the planet, or an exaggerated notion of how easy it is to adopt will leave this site alone. Almost every media piece on assisted reproductive technology attracts a firestorm of ignorant and venomous commentary. I would like the blog to be the antidote to that, and if anyone bothers to read it, I hope they'll help make it and keep it that way.
