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Our bodies are indeed weedy and promiscuous, and the earth has always been going to seed.
I am a Psychoanalyst of the interpersonal tradition and past president of the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Society. I am executive director of a nonprofit patient group, RESOLVE NYC, whose mission is to provide education, advocacy, and support for patients undergoing infertility and to address reproductive issues throughout the lifetime of the couple. I have served on a number of committees of the Mental Health Professional Group (MIIPG) of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), including serving as past cochair of the Scientific Development Committee. I am a member of the “Tristate Shrinks,” a group of psychologists who address psychological and program concerns that affect the reproductive centers in the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut area. Functioning in my roles in these different domains has often created uncertainty and doubt. Actions that may lead to positive outcomes in one domain may lead to immoral outcomes in another. A point of view taken with an individual or couple may lead, if extended to larger sociopolitical arenas, to positions I would never agree to or endorse. The political, moral, scientific, and intellectual underpinnings of the different contexts in which I function has lead to intense and, at times, contradictory emotions around the same issues.
Psychoanalysts working with patients caught up in this system need to be somewhat familiar with the system's strengths and weaknesses. My concern is with the patients and therapists who may find themselves dealing with moral and ethical choices they never dreamed would occur when they set about “to make a baby.” In the following pages I offer an