Treating infertility as a missing capability, not a disease: a capability approach.

Infertility patients and patient advocates have long argued for classifying infertility as a disease, in the hopes that this recognition would improve coverage for and access to fertility treatment. However, for many fertility patients, including older women, single women and same-sex couples, infertility does not represent a true disease state. Therefore, while calling infertility a 'disease' may seem politically advantageous, it might actually exclude patients with 'social' or 'relational' infertility from treatment.