By Amrita Pande | Mail & Guardian | May 22, 2020
In this opinion piece in South Africa’s Mail & Guardian, Amrita Pande raises the question of whether assisted reproduction is an essential service in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Pande notes how infertility professional associations in the US, Europe, and South Africa initially called for suspension of new or non-urgent fertility treatments in response to the COVID crisis, and then reversed course under pressure. She points to preventable causes of infertility in South Africa, disproportionate impacts on Black and poor women, and how public resources are going to private healthcare and high-tech individualized treatments.