The Difference Between Infertility and Impotence

Most times, the words infertility and impotence is used interchangeably but that is wrong. In fact it is a misguided information. Basically, impotence and infertility are two different biological phenomena, though the former compliments the later.

Conventionally, infertility simply means abnormally low ability to reproduce while impotence is the inability of a man to achieve and sustain erection. By implication, the word infertility can only be used when a man is not able to get his wife pregnant while impotence is used in the case of poor sexual satisfaction due to poor or no erection. What this means is that a man can have good erection (not impotent) yet unable to impregnate a woman.

On the other hand, a man may have weak erection (problem of impotence) but can get the wife pregnant any day he manages to get good erection (in this case there is no infertility problem).
It is therefore wrong for a man to depend on the strength of his erection to assess his fertility profile.