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The focus on IVF and other reproductive-assistive technologies during this election cycle has been, in a way, refreshing—suggesting that societally we’re headed toward more open and honest discourse about infertility and pregnancy loss. If true, it’s long overdue: More than 10% of women of reproductive age in the United States have experienced or will experience fertility issues, and while the likes of Ariel Levy and Candice Carty-Williams have written about the experience of miscarrying—or struggling to conceive in the first place—infertility stigma remains all too real.
This unfortunate cultural context makes Only Murders in the Building star Selena Gomez’s recent disclosure to Vanity Fair’s Yohana Desta that she will not be able to carry her own children all the more significant. When it comes to a topic as sensitive and under-discussed as infertility, Gomez’s honesty feels almost like a public service, signalling to the many, many people facing reproductive challenges across the United States and around the world that they are not alone.
To be clear, the last thing any of us should expect from Gomez—or anyone else struggling to conceive—is a permanently pasted-on brave face. There should be room for both the pain and suffering that infertility can cause, and the concept of a female life that is not governed by the ability (or desire) to bear children. (J.D. Vance, take note.) For Gomez, the realization has, indeed, been painful—“I have a lot of medical issues that would put my life and the baby’s in jeopardy. That was something I had to grieve for a while,” she tells Desta—but it’s also opened her to other routes to becoming a parent, such as surrogacy or adoption. “I’m excited for what that journey will look like, but it’ll look a little different,” she says.
Gomez isn’t the only famous woman who’s spoken up about her infertility struggles over the last few years. Author Chrissy Teigen has been candid about the miscarriage she and husband John Legend suffered in 2020, and while her Instagram feed regularly features adorable pictures of her four kids playing and fighting and doing all the silly things one regularly associates with childhood, she also mixes in frank and unflinching reminiscences about the son she and Legend lost. Gabrielle Union has also spoken out about the series of miscarriages that led to her and husband Dwyane Wade’s surrogacy journey, and while she’s unafraid to call out the racial and ethnic exploitation that can accompany surrogacy, she’s also clearly full of gratitude for the process that eventually brought her and Wade their daughter Kaavia, who is now five years old.
Ultimately, what women like Gomez, Teigen and Union have to offer the many others out there dealing with infertility, pregnancy loss, miscarriage, or any combination thereof is their willingness to publicly adjust their initial preconceptions about how family-making “should” go for them, and embrace a more complex, holistic vision of what it means to start a family. (As Gomez puts it herself in her profile: “At the end of the day, I don’t care. It’ll be mine. It’ll be my baby.”)
Of course, not everyone who wants children ends up having them, and the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022 has meant that far too many people are cornered into parenthood instead of coming to it freely and with their full, informed consent. Still, as long as there are people crying happy tears over positive pregnancy tests, and then having to find their way back to themselves after miscarriage—or never seeing that little blue plus sign on the test at all—I genuinely believe that public-facing women unshackling themselves from the conventional feminine expectation to “keep it together” and stay silent about their reproductive difficulties is so much more than a personal unburdening. It is, in fact, a genuine act of grace.
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
