Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Infertility is a term used by medical professionals to refer to the physical inability to conceive a child or to successfully carry a child to term. Demographers typically employ the word “subfecundity” to describe this inability to have desired children. Some demographers use “infertility” to mean childlessness, regardless of childbearing intentions or contraception practices, but others utilize the term more narrowly and in conformity with popular and general sociological usage to refer to a woman's inability to give birth in the absence of contraception. Although infertility must necessarily manifest itself in the female partner, the man or the woman or both may have the reproductive impairment. A specific male factor is identified in from 20 percent to 40 percent of those cases where a cause can be found. Since a major cause of infertility is female tubal factors related to reproductive tract infections (RTIs) spread through heterosexual intercourse, it is likely that men contribute to infertility in more than half of all infertile couples. It is thus ironic that, in many parts of the world, infertility is considered to be a “woman's problem.” Medical practitioners generally differentiate between “primary infertility,” a situation in which an infertile woman has not had any pregnancies, and “secondary infertility,” in which infertility has been preceded by at least one pregnancy. ... log in or subscribe to read full text