I received numerous emails from chat groups and even the American Fertility Association regarding the Tyra Banks show’s upcoming show about infertile women and their struggle to get pregnant.
In fact, I was almost going to answer with a reply and see if I was eligible to be part of the show because it was about women desperate to become mothers and had tried many different routes including artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization without success.
Little did I know that the whole idea behind the show was:
“Do you know a woman who is obsessed with becoming a mom? Have you seen and heard her struggle for years, felt her unvoiced jealously and seen her desperation first hand? Have you watched silently for too long as she gets her hopes up only to be disappointed and heartbroken when she can’t conceive? Has she tried extreme methods and spent a lot of money to get pregnant with no luck? Do you want to finally tell her she needs to stop the emotional and physical stress on her body and seriously consider adoption or a surrogate alternative? If you know a woman who is obsessed with becoming a mom and getting pregnant, then SUBMIT BELOW.“
Today I received an email from the American Fertility Association apologizing to its members for soliciting for the show and the following:
Trampling on Trust
As many of you know, The AFA makes every effort to assist the media when reports, stories and programs deal with infertility, reproductive difficulties, fertility preservation and protection. We were approached by the Tyra Banks Show senior producer who pitched one segment about women who pursue ART despite repeated let-downs and perhaps impossible odds. We sent a notice to you asking if you’d be interested in participating in that show. What we’ve subsequently learned is that the taping revealed another agenda entirely. We are furious. There is no excuse for that duplicitious solicitation. Below is the open letter we’ve sent to the Tyra Banks senior producer.
Ms. Radecki,
The American Fertility Association is writing in response to the numerous calls, emails and blog links we’ve received about the Tyra Banks Show you’ve produced about “infertility.”
We gladly assisted you in your effort to recruit people who’ve stuck with Assisted Reproduction despite long-shot odds and the painful difficulties associated with compromised fertility for an installment of your show. Your detailed query asked for contact with women who could speak emotionally and articulately about their determination and their struggles (see below). It is your right to interview willing and informed participants as you see fit. Here we underscore informed. Your show is not a news show, but rather planned entertainment. Nowhere in that initial letter or in numerous subsequent conversations did you even hint that what you were intending was a set up for “spontaneous” interventions and the subsequent damaging conflagrations.
Let’s be clear. If you’d honestly put forth your mission, stating that the Tyra Banks Show was interested in emotional confrontations, people willing to defend to family, friends and the world their particular quest for biogenetic children, we’d have put out your solicitation to our membership just the same. We believe in the intelligent decision-making capacities of the people The American Fertility Association serves. However, it now appears you were running a bait-and-switch operation designed to exploit well-meaning and, apparently, the most vulnerable among this group of patients simply to re-create a by-now tired and trite TV rite of public humiliation. That is simply reprehensible.
It is unfortunate that the prism through which The Tyra Banks Show chose to view the delicate and complex subjects of reproductive difficulties and associated medical treatments yielded very little about those topics. Instead, we are told, the focus was on manufactured conflict and hysteria. You could just as well have targeted any other poorly understood condition or disease and produced the same segment.
We regret that we have exposed our membership to such tactics. Despite urging that you treat reproductive difficulties with sensitivity and thoughtfulness — even if that yielded tough grilling and a feisty give-and-take, you chose to tread the same histrionic ground that’s pretty well trampled by now.
The Staff of The American Fertility Association
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All I can say is shame on you, Tyra. You obviously haven’t been stricken with the 1 out of 6 odds for being infertile or needing reproductive assistance.
I always knew you were a stone cold bitch - but this goes to all new lows. Not even Maury Povich or Jerry Springer could have been as insensitive or desperate for ratings.
