Infertility in the US: Impact, Treatment, and Support

This essay delves into the significant issue of infertility in the United States, examining its profound impact on couples' emotional, mental, and financial well-being. It highlights the stress, anxiety, and depression often experienced by those struggling to conceive, emphasizing the need for counseling and support. The essay explores various treatment options, including in vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogacy, and adoption, both domestically and internationally, as viable paths to parenthood. It underscores the importance of family support throughout the process. The essay provides an overview of infertility, its causes, effects, and available solutions, offering valuable insights into this complex and sensitive subject. The essay also mentions the importance of counselling and support for couples struggling with infertility, and how alternative treatments like IVF, Surrogacy and adoption can reduce the stress level.

Running Head: Infertility in US
Infertility in US
Essay
System04104
6/14/2019

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Introduction
Infertility is one of the major problems in United States and causes both mental and
emotional stress for the couples and in their relationship. Infertility is a situation that refers to
an inability of couples to become pregnant even after regular unprotected sexual intercourse
with partner. According to the WHO more than 10% women are suffering from infertility
even after they were trying unsuccessfully for pregnancy after more than five years of stable
relationship (Haimovici, Anderson, Bates, Racowsky, Ginsburg, Simovici & Fichorova,
2018). This essay helps to understand the impact of infertility on couples and about the
available ways or methodologies that help to reduce this problem in couples.
Infertility in United States
Infertility is one of the major causes of stress in couples and it not only affect the
health of the couples rather it also poses burden emotionally and mentally. Large numbers of
couples are suffering from infertility in USA, it creates anxiety and depression in the couples,
and most of the women feel that infertility hijacked their life. Infertility is really emotionally
and physically exhausting for the couples (Tao, Coates & Maycock, 2012). In many studies,
it has been found that women feel same level of mental and emotional stress in infertility,
which is similar to cancer or cardiac patients. However, the couples spend lots of money on
various things to get pregnant and come out from digression. However, the issue of infertility
also causes problems in relationship where couples depress and frustrated and it is directly
related to the happiness in the relationship. The poor relationship because of infertility and
depression in couples again leads to both mental and emotional stress among couples
(Eisenberg, Li, Behr, Cullen, Galusha, Lamb, & Lipshultz, 2014).
A person who is suffering from infertility will face many problems in terms of
biological problems, psychological problems, financial, and social problems. Therefore,
counselling is really a helpful context in consideration with infertility in couples. Counselling
of couples required to those couples who are suffering from infertility. Counselling helps to
reduce the emotional and mental stress of people by giving them advice, support and mental
toughness with proper guidance about how they can tackle this problem. However,
counselling of those couples who are suffering from infertility helps them to enjoy the life
with more satisfying ways. It is a helpful approach that helps the couples and provides

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patient-centred care services to the couples with proper suggestions and guidelines and
provide them proper infertility treatment that will eliminate their problems. There are many
alternatives available for infertility such as IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), surrogacy method,
and adoption of children in the country or from overseas (Carrell & Peterson, 2010).
There are many ways of treatments available in medical science to encounter the
issues of infertility in couples. However, IVF and surrogacy are two common and popular
ways. The IVF method used to collect the healthy eggs and from ovaries and fertilized by
sperm in labs. This method helps to the couples to get pregnant and it is one of the low cost
methods to remove infertility and provide happiness to couple by giving them opportunities
to birth a child. The second method is a surrogacy method, which can be used by another
woman to give birth for another couple (Masoumi, Garousian, Khani, Oliaei & Shayan,
2016). Surrogacy is normally usual in US and most of the gay couple also used surrogacy for
children. However, Surrogacy is not allowed in some countries, but it is so usual in USA.
There are many surrogacy agencies are currently working in USA and doing practices under
the US surrogacy laws. The US surrogacy laws generally better than other countries. Even an
international couple also use the advantages of surrogacy in USA and take the same quality
and quantity of services like any American Intended parents. The US surrogacy agencies
provide the best services to the couples without any discrimination of American or foreign
people (Greil, Slauson-Blevins, McQuillan, Lowry, Burch & Shreffler, 2018).
The one of the most option or alternative for infertility is adoption of children. The
adoption of children is one of the usual methods to get children and remove the stress of
infertility from the family. In inter-country adoption of children, it is required in USA that
parents fulfil the requirement of adopting children and also follows the laws of their state and
the laws of the child’s origin country. However, those couples who are 25 years of age or
more than that can easily adopt the children in USA or from other countries. This method is
one of the popular and more usual way of getting children in the USA (Hajela, Prasad,
Kumaran & Kumar, 2016).
Conclusion
The infertility is one of the major reasons of stress in couples in USA and people
always live in anxiety and depression because of infertility. However, there are many
alternatives of infertility in USA and even used in many countries that helps the couple to get

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children. IVF, surrogacy, and adoption of children within the country and from other
countries are some of the best alternatives available to couples for getting children and reduce
their stress level.

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References
Carrell, D. T., & Peterson, C. M. (2010). Reproductive endocrinology and
Infertility. Springer Sci+ Busin Med, 345.
Eisenberg, M. L., Li, S., Behr, B., Cullen, M. R., Galusha, D., Lamb, D. J., & Lipshultz, L. I.
(2014). Semen quality, infertility and mortality in the USA. Human
reproduction, 29(7), 1567-1574.
Greil, A. L., Slauson-Blevins, K., McQuillan, J., Lowry, M. H., Burch, A. R., & Shreffler, K.
M. (2018). Relationship satisfaction among infertile couples: implications of gender
and self-identification. Journal of Family Issues, 39(5), 1304-1325.
Haimovici, F., Anderson, J. L., Bates, G. W., Racowsky, C., Ginsburg, E. S., Simovici, D., &
Fichorova, R. N. (2018). Stress, anxiety, and depression of both partners in infertile
couples are associated with cytokine levels and adverse IVF outcome. American
Journal of Reproductive Immunology, 79(4), e12832.
Hajela, S., Prasad, S., Kumaran, A., & Kumar, Y. (2016). Stress and infertility: A
review. International Journal of Reproduction, Contraception, Obstetrics and
Gynecology, 5(4), 941.
Masoumi, S. Z., Garousian, M., Khani, S., Oliaei, S. R., & Shayan, A. (2016). Comparison of
quality of life, sexual satisfaction and marital satisfaction between fertile and infertile
couples. International journal of fertility & sterility, 10(3), 290.
Tao, P., Coates, R., & Maycock, B. (2012). Investigating marital relationship in infertility: a
systematic review of quantitative studies. Journal of reproduction & infertility, 13(2),
71.