Are we still using the word “barren” to describe a woman’s journey through IVF or fertility challenges?
Before I started my IVF journey, I went through a battery of tests. The most painful of them all was the hysterosalpingogram, performed to check if my fallopian tubes and uterus were healthy enough to support a pregnancy. It was a necessary step before beginning IVF, but the anticipation gnawed at me. I was scared, riddled with anxiety. What if my body wasn’t capable? What if I couldn’t carry a child? Those “what ifs” consumed my every thought.
In an attempt to find comfort, I sought guidance from the pastor at the American Church in Paris. (I was living in Paris, France at that time.) I needed words that would soothe my worry, maybe even offer a glimmer of hope. Like so many, I threw everything into this journey—my energy, my heart, my hope. But instead of solace, I was met with language that stung. The pastor used the word “barren.”
Barren. The word sat heavy on my chest, echoing a history that many of us know all too well. For centuries, the term has been weaponized, casting women without children as lesser, flawed, or morally deficient. Once, women labeled as “barren” were deemed witches, cast out, or worse, accused of embodying a spiritual or moral failure.
Hearing it used in a modern context was jarring. I was seeking comfort, but instead, I found myself boxed into an ancient narrative of inadequacy. The pastor shared his own story of loss, a miscarriage, followed by the eventual joy of four children. But that wasn’t my story, and it didn’t offer the hope he thought it would. I wasn’t even close to having one child—let alone four. His story only underscored the vast chasm between where I was and where I desperately wanted to be.
And then, there it was again: the suggestion that I could be “barren” if the test results weren’t what I hoped for. The weight of that word felt suffocating, more of a pronouncement than a possibility. Humiliating, isolating, shrouded in judgment.
I can’t help but wonder—have others felt this too? That moment when language meant to describe biology becomes a label, a verdict on your worth? It’s time we retire “barren” from our discourse. A woman’s journey through IVF, infertility, or child-free life by circumstance is already filled with enough emotional complexity. Words like these only deepen the wounds, dragging us backward instead of helping us move forward.
Let’s choose words that heal, not ones that remind us of outdated stigmas. We deserve better. We deserve compassion.
