The Experience of Persistent Infertility: Beyond the Medical Model

Abstract

This research explores the experience of persistent infertility among 15 childless Canadian women who discontinued fertility treatments when they did not work, who could not access assisted conception, and/or whose infertility is untreatable. By investigating how women understand their experience with persistent infertility and examining the parallels and divergences within and across the participants’ experiences, this analysis indicates that women’s fertility is an intricate lifelong journey, and persistent infertility disrupts this journey in ways that are biological, social, and gendered. Further, persistent infertility fractures the complex relationship between the body and the self. This research theorizes the embodiment of persistent infertility and the meaning placed on reproductive loss events (e.g., failed embryo transfer, miscarriage, and stillbirth), by the women in this study. Lastly, in the medicalized Canadian context, persistent infertility illustrates that hope for maternity is commodified, stratified, and reenforces the biological standard of normative motherhood.