Baby Fever. Defining Infertility in Postwar Belgium

Social scientists have argued that involuntary childlessness changed from an unfulfilled desire into a disease in the postwar period. They posit that the development of treatments, such as artificial insemination and IVF, transformed the experience of infertility profoundly: medical possibilities excited the, often false, hope for a cure. In modern histories of infertility, too, the main actors tend to be those offering or seeking medical help. Historians have mostly studied nonmedical meanings of infertility – whether political, social, cultural or religious – as contexts rather than as subjects in their own right.
But can we project a medical view of infertility onto the past? Until recently, infertility treatments were not widespread, nor available to everyone. As the full reimbursement for the costs of infertility treatments was established as late as 2003 in Belgium, large groups in society did not have access to them. Other infertile individuals or couples might not have sought medical help on moral or religious grounds, or because they already had children. This project therefore aims to rethink our understanding of infertility as a medicalized condition by elucidating the diverse ways in which it was defined and lived from 1945 until today. The elision of infertility with medicine has unwittingly silenced the voices of those who did not view their experience in medical terms. This study will make them heard at last.