Jim Hawkins: U.S. Fertility Care: Ignoring Minorities?: People who study the fertility business have been concerned for years over the fact that racial minorities utilize fertility treatments at a lower rate than whites. One easy explanation is the distribution of wealth in the U.S. Fertility care is expensive and often not covered by insurance, and some people in racial minority groups do not seek care because they are priced out of the market. But, this explanation is incomplete because even in states where insurance covers fertility treatments, African American and Hispanic women are underrepresented among those seeking fertility treatments.
Another concerning possibility is that some sort of conscious or unconscious racist norms operate within the business. As law professor Dorothy Roberts pointed out in an important essay over 15 years ago, however, the problem is that "[e]vidence is hard to come by."
