Rapper Remy Ma wants to bring some "joy" back into the lives of women struggling to conceive by establishing a charity fund to help with the costs of fertility treatment.
The All the Way Up star opened up to fans online in January (17), when she revealed she had suffered a miscarriage after having an ectopic pregnancy, a complication in which the fertilised egg gets attached to the outside of the uterus.
She was advised to consider in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to start a family with her rapper husband Papoose, and after realising the high cost of the procedure, Remy decided she wanted to share her financial fortune with others facing similar fertility struggles.
She recently revealed she is in the process of setting up a women's foundation, and Remy hopes it will provide much needed support and guidance for females desperate to become mums.
Recalling her own reaction to losing her baby, she tells Billboard.com, "As a woman, you start to think, 'What did I do wrong?, What could I have done to prevent it?' "
It took hearing stories about IVF dreams from others for Remy to realise she could make a real impact on people's lives with the money she's made from her career, after landing her big break with late hip-hop star Big Pun in the late 1990s.
"Women would talk to me about how they wish they could go through with the procedure but they can't afford it and I thought that was crazy because medical insurance or even a couple of hundred dollars can help you get rid of a child but to bring life into this world costs thousands of dollars," she explains. "That could've been the Remy who didn't meet (Big Pun) and who got a regular job and wanted to have kids. It's wrong and it's unfair."
She adds, "I want to help people who feel like they'll never feel happy because doctors told them 'You can conceive but we need $15,000 or $20,000' - I just want to make people happy... So if I can provide that for people now and stop them from feeling the way I felt (after her miscarriage), I'm 100 per cent for it. I want to give women that joy."
