ABSTRACT
Infertility can be a source of profound grief. Infertile women mourn the loss of the fertile self and their desired children. Part of the work of mourning can be understood as revising the autobiographical narrative in order to accommodate infertility's disruption to the plot of one's life. Kirkman can tell us that infertility involves grieving, and no doubt for many women it does. But that depressing state of affairs isn't completely accurate for someone like me. It is probably a good thing that not everyone can, or wants to, have children. It is probably helpful in enabling human beings to manage the planet's limited resources of space, food and energy, which most experts agree will only get more limited in supply in the future. When average persons conceive a child "naturally" through biological means, they are presumed automatically to be normal' and to be innocent' in terms of their propensity toward things like child abuse.
