Hilary Mantel Quotes

There are a lot of difficulties with people trying to conceive.

I am a sufferer of endometriosis. I didn't want any young women to go through what I went through. I thought that people should know about it.

The endometriosis was not just in my reproductive organs; it was everywhere.

In the grand scheme of things, a lot more women go through this than I think people realize or talk about, so that wasn't a problem for me as far as saying that I have endometriosis.

Back in my mid-20s I was told I'd never be able to have children as I wasn't having periods. Doctors tried to start up my monthly cycles, but when nothing worked, they actually offered me a hysterectomy. Without it, they said I might get ovarian cancer in the future. I chose not to have the operation, and am so glad I didn't.

One of my best friends had a tough time getting pregnant, and her situation had me really thinking about freezing my eggs.

Nine million Americans a year, that we know of, struggle with infertility.

So many people have so much trouble having kids.

And, as if nature were protecting man against his own ingenuity, the reproductive processes were affected for a time; men became sterile, women had miscarriages, menstruation stopped.

People with fertility problems are not alone. It is a very very common problem for couples today. I've seen statistics that are just staggering.

There was something to me that was really compelling about that woman, already knowing she couldn't get pregnant. When I made that movie I was maybe 24, and to be 24 and already know you can't get pregnant, that was really interesting to me.

It's okay to talk about birth, okay - then menstruation. I first started my advocacy for women's health in the field of reproductive freedom, and the next stage would be bringing menopause out of the closet.

So many women waited until later to get married and then even later after they got married to have children. And then they have problems, and it takes them five, six, seven years to have children.

At one point in my career, while still hosting 'The Arsenio Hall Show,' I was told by my doctor that it might not be physically possible for me to have children.

Childbearing is glorified in part because women die from it.

I feel special. Most women will have only one menopause, and they will hate it. I will have two, and when the second one comes, I will know what is coming. I am having my extra menopause as a cure. I have endometriosis.

Endometriosis is notoriously difficult to diagnose because the symptoms are perverse. A woman with mild endometriosis can be in an agony for days every month (or every day for every month); women with the severe kind can have hardly any pain at all, like me.

Unfortunately, with fertility, time is not your friend. People are waiting longer to get married and longer to have kids, and so many more people are experiencing fertility issues. But no one ever talks about it.

There are thin girls with infertility issues, normal sized girls with infertility issues and overweight girls with infertility issues. Unless your doctor tells you your weight is affecting you in some way... once the doctor rules it out, that's really not it.

To be a straight person and discover you're infertile is almost like discovering you're not a straight person.

I've been advised not to have any more children for medical reasons, so that's it - the shop has closed, even though I would have loved a daughter.

Usually people have gone through years of in vitro, just trying. The dilemma that faces infertile couples right now in America, there's so many of them. That's why - you know that's why I started talking about it, so that they didn't hear just the terrible stories.

Couples in their 30s are having trouble having kids. And you just kind of extrapolate that and say, 'What if it happened to everybody? What kind of society would it be like if all of a sudden we knew that this was the end of the line - we couldn't have kids?'

Young women, adolescent girls, are more subject to infection, sometimes at a rate of six times that of boys. That tells you a lot about the vulnerability of women.

I don't think a lot of women know how much their chances of having a child diminish as they age.