The conversation surrounding reproductive health is undergoing a profound cultural and medical shift, yet millions of individuals continue to face a towering wall of financial and systemic barriers when seeking care. Dr. Temeka Zore, a double board-certified OB-GYN and fertility specialist, recently appeared on an episode of CBS News’ Healthful with Norah O’Donnell to unpack these complexities. During their discussion, Dr. Zore and host Norah O’Donnell explored a wide range of critical reproductive health topics, including infertility, endometriosis, PMOS (formerly known as PCOS), egg freezing, ovarian reserve, and what modern women truly need to know about navigating their fertility.
Central to their conversation was a stark medical reality that often gets lost in public discourse: the World Health Organization has officially classified infertility as a medical disease. However, as Dr. Zore pointed out during the broadcast, access to the diagnostic tools and medical treatments required to address this disease remains deeply unequal and, for many people, completely out of reach.
This classification is not a recent development. The WHO formally defined infertility as a disease of the reproductive system back in 2009. For more than a decade and a half, the global health community has recognized that infertility is a pathological condition rather than a lifestyle choice or a stroke of bad luck. This stance was reinforced even further with the issuance of new global guidelines on infertility, emphasizing that equitable access to care is an international imperative. Yet, despite this long-standing medical consensus, the public perception of infertility has lagged far behind the science.
On the CBS News program, Dr. Zore addressed the heavy burden of misconceptions and misinformation that continues to surround reproductive struggles. Too often, society frames infertility as a personal failure, leading many patients to internalize shame and guilt over a medical diagnosis entirely outside of their control.
“So many women, so many people come in and want to blame themselves for this diagnosis, but it’s not your fault if you have infertility,” Dr. Zore emphasized during the episode. “You didn’t cause this on yourself, and so it does require treatment for many people. I think we have to have that perspective. There’s not a taboo topic here. It’s a true medical disease.”
Among the most pervasive misconceptions dismantled during the discussion is the widespread belief that infertility is strictly an aging disease—a condition that exclusively impacts women past a certain threshold of youth. While the statistical probability of experiencing fertility challenges does increase as individuals age, biology is rarely so straightforward.
“You have a higher chance of being infertile the older you’re trying to have kids, but at the same incidence I can have a 28-year-old who has been trying with their partner for a year not being able to get pregnant,” Dr. Zore explained. She noted that these are frequently the patients who walk into clinics expressing confusion and distress, wondering why they are struggling despite their youth and healthy lifestyles. According to the specialist, there are numerous biological factors beyond chronological age that can explain why an individual may have difficulty conceiving.
At the same time, the medical landscape has seen remarkable advancements. The technology behind procedures such as egg freezing and in vitro fertilization has improved significantly over the years, and the sheer number of fertility clinics operating across the country has grown. But technological innovation and physical availability mean very little if patients cannot afford to walk through the clinic doors. As Dr. Zore pointed out, accessibility remains a persistent and major crisis, largely driven by the fact that the vast majority of fertility treatments and preservation procedures are still excluded from standard health insurance coverage.
The public narrative surrounding reproductive health has slowly begun to shift away from blaming women and toward empowering them with medical knowledge and proactive options. However, experts and advocates argue that empowerment rings hollow when those options are restricted exclusively to individuals with the disposable income to pay out of pocket. For Latinas and other women of color, who already navigate systemic disparities in healthcare access, insurance coverage, and wealth accumulation, specialized fertility care frequently remains financially impossible.
This creates a glaring contradiction within modern medicine. If society is truly committed to reframing infertility as a legitimate medical disease, the question remains: why are essential interventions like egg freezing, IVF, intrauterine insemination, and specialized fertility medications treated as luxury consumer goods rather than healthcare necessities?
By maintaining this status quo, the broader healthcare system sends a devastating message to patients. It acknowledges that a medical condition is real, yet shifts the entire financial burden of treating that disease onto the individual or the couple. The economic toll is profound. Cost and the ongoing lack of comprehensive insurance coverage continue to stand as the single greatest barriers to fertility treatment, disproportionately impacting lower-income families and minority communities.
With a single round of egg freezing routinely costing anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000 depending on the geographic location and specific clinic, minority populations are left behind. Statistics highlight these disparities clearly, with only 3.4% to 4.5% of Latina patients undergoing egg freezing or related fertility preservation cycles in the United States. This economic reality is precisely why high-profile public figures, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have chosen to speak transparently about their own personal egg-freezing journeys and the steep financial costs involved. When a medical condition becomes as widespread as modern infertility, expecting patients to independently finance thousands of dollars out of pocket is untenable.
When necessary medical care is financially inaccessible, the psychological toll compounds the physical struggle. Individuals who cannot afford treatment frequently internalize the blame, convincing themselves that they simply did not work hard enough or plan well enough to secure the funds. After all, the internal narrative goes, if other peers managed to find the money, why couldn’t they? This dynamic manufactures an unfair emotional burden, forcing women to blame themselves for a socioeconomic barrier. Ultimately, an individual’s reproductive future and health outcomes should never be dictated by their bank account.
For those fortunate enough to secure employer-sponsored benefits that cover these procedures, the disparity in the system becomes even more glaring. Navigating a system where treatment availability depends entirely on the generosity of a specific job’s benefits package highlights a broken model. Society cannot realistically tell women that they must be proactive about their reproductive health, educate themselves on their biological timelines, and consider preserving their eggs, while simultaneously ignoring the immense economic barriers that determine whether those choices are even possible.
Classifying infertility as a disease represents a vital and necessary first step toward dismantling the stigma, blame, and shame that patients have carried for generations. Yet, if the medical and political systems stop short of making that care genuinely accessible, society is simply shifting the blame—punishing women and families for not being able to afford the cure. If infertility is formally recognized as a disease, then the ability to treat it must not depend on wealth. Period.
