Editor’s letter: from the desk of The Weekly’s Kim Doherty
When my daughter was born, her great-grandmother sent her a little card, welcoming her to the family. A thoughtful if unremarkable gesture, you might think, until you know the backstory: that this incredible 85-year-old hadn’t yet met my daughter, hadn’t met me and was fully aware that my daughter had been conceived via IVF when my now husband – who was working overseas as a foreign correspondent – was approximately 10,000 kilometres away. Even for our generation, that takes a fair bit of getting your brain around and I had people of all ages scratching their heads. Yet Mama never faltered. She opened her arms and welcomed us to the family with unconditional love, a fact for which I will always be grateful. As my husband says, at her age, you’ve probably worked out what matters in life and she knows by now that family comes in all shapes and sizes.
It’s a sentiment that has stayed with me as I’ve watched friends create their modern families, in all sorts of ways. One of my friends has four siblings who were adopted after their parents died in a car crash. Another has fostered more than 20 children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yet another has beautiful twins thanks to a selfless egg donor. One of my daughter’s little friends was carried by her biological aunt, who acted as a surrogate for her mum, who was born without a uterus. An act of sisterly love which created a little miracle in our playgroup.
The World Health Organisation – which considers having a family to be a human right – lists infertility as the third most serious health condition facing the planet in the 21st century, behind cancer and cardiovascular disease.
As many as 48.5 million couples worldwide – including one in six Australian couples – have been classed as infertile. For those of us fortunate enough to live in countries where it’s available, those heartbreaking statistics are offset by a burgeoning fertility industry which is changing lives and moving fast, too fast for many – and certainly the law – to keep up.
Few people know the challenges and complexities of it better than our cover star, Sally Obermeder and her husband, Marcus, who had their first daughter, Annabelle, thanks to IVF (amid a breast cancer diagnosis), and their second, Elyssa, just before Christmas, thanks to an overseas surrogate (see page 42).
And while we, as a society, have to work out how to navigate the implications of this incredible new science, those of us who have had the opportunity of a family thanks to the magic of medical research – like
Sally and I – are left to count our blessings. When the ethical questions, social dilemmas and sheer science of it all starts to mess with my head, as I suspect it does with so many Australian women, I find comfort in hugging my beloved daughter and remembering Mama’s kindness and wisdom.
I hope your family – whatever size or shape it takes – brings you joy this month, too.