Before Kourtney Kardashian Barker naturally conceived her fourth child with her husband Travis Barker, she felt pushed into trying assisted reproductive technology.
“I felt really pressured and pushed into doing IVF,” Barker, who is due with a baby boy in the next couple of months, told Vogue in an Oct. 17 interview. “It went against my intuition, and I didn’t feel fully prepared for the mental or physical toll [it] takes.”
The soon-to-be mom of four didn’t say who specifically nudged her toward paying to participate in assisted reproductive technology (ART). Given her sisters’ long history with in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, Barker probably felt some pull from her family to embrace assisted reproductive technology as a means to an end.
The couple, 44 and 47, was also told by doctors that, despite their attempts to cleanse their way into having a baby, their chances of conceiving without ART years after Barker’s fertility first began to decline were low.
For thousands of dollars, emotionally vulnerable couples like the Barkers who have failed to get pregnant after months of trying are told that ART is their only chance at having children.
Reproductive technology does yield tens of thousands of babies each year but it’s not a foolproof way for everyone to ensure parenthood. It is, however, profitable for those prescribing it.
Artificial conception interventions, no matter how they are billed in the media and by fertility facilities, are not a perfect path to pregnancy. Procedures like IVF require patients
