To be annoyed at IVF comments

@twinkledag it isnt though - it says women who dont fall under a certain criteria may be refused

I think IVF should be included in the NHS. However, with strict criteria such as not being over or below a certain age range, not having children already, only once etc

That is the criteria 😐

I really really hate the argument of 'infertile people should adopt rather than IVF as there are loads of children here who need a home, help them before being so selfish' because why are we not saying this to fertile couples?? Like 'how dare they have a biological child when there are thousands of children in care who need a home!'. You never hear that argument.
It is not the responsibility of infertile couples to take care of the children of fertile people who cannot look after them.

Well children cost thousands to raise so people do pay for them.
If you charge for maternity care all you will end up with is grossly ill children, not a civilised society.

The problem with charging people for maternity care is that it's not like charging people to go to the theatre or park your car. If you don't pay for those things, you're not allowed in and can't access them. But having sex is free, and if people have sex and get pregnant, they need maternity care whether they can pay for it or not.

The full cost should be charged. Why wouldn’t it be? If someone can’t afford it then tough luck as it’s a want not a need. Do you have children or want to have children? Can you afford and would be happy to pay a flat fee of say £15k for each child and to go without having children if you don’t have that money?

@WonderWebbs thank you. On the one hand I feel relieved it was cancelled because I am very nervous about getting pregnant and bringing a child into the world now, but on the other hand we'd gone through so much to get those embryos and now they may never be used. It's a tough situation and hard not to feel defeated by it all.

@icecreamandcandyfloss having any child is a want not a need so I presume you are in favour of the privatising all maternity care?

Dell, I think it would be much better if we did charge for maternity services even if not the full cost. We’d raise funds, not take from taxes so much and people would have to ensure they could afford the care and the cost of raising a child after.

Likewise, like other countries, I think there should be a charge for seeing a doctor etc. The more funding we have, the better for the NHS.

We are extremely lucky that we have the NHS, many use it and never pay into the system but will have free healthcare that’s taken for granted I suspect by many.

I agree it shouldn’t be funded by the NHS either. It should be a private treatment as the result is a want not a need imo. There are so many other areas that need more funding than this.

No one has a right to have a child and if you cannot get pregnant naturally then you should go private and pay.

No one has a right to a new kidney or a liver transplant, but making these services available to only those who can afford them is a dangerous path to go down.

@Hamsterian It was me who said 'procreation is one of life's fundamentals' - and it is.

Perhaps I should have explained myself better. The ability to reproduce is one of the fundamental characteristics of all living organisms, including us.

So when something so fundamental is denied to an individual, it is hardly surprising that it makes people distressed.

Just wanted to offer my sympathy to your fertility struggles.
I empathise greatly. I struggled to conceive for 6 years, had numerous losses, ectopic and 3 failed embryo transfers. Our 4th transfer resulted in our nearly 1 year old twins.
I know completely how hard the journey is and although it is completely the right thing to do, it must be hard for you to have to wait even longer for something that already feels like it will never happen.
For the people saying the NHS shouldn't fund IVF, im sure they would be quick to change their opinion if it was them struggling to conceive. Its easy to make them comments when you haven't experienced the longing, the heart ache and suffering that infertility brings.
I wish you all the look when you can eventually resume treatment

@okiedokieme another one who hasn’t got a breeze what they’re talking about. My DH is infertile and has been his whole life. Age is irrelevant. Much as you would like to you can’t just make up facts about old maternal age and extrapolate from there. Educate yourself

@SunShine682 if no-one has the right to a child then no-one has the right to free maternity care. Have a set cost of having a baby at £15k and if you can’t afford that then tough luck as having a child is not a right. The NHS will save way more money doing this.

@firsttimemum30 With all due respect it is not a disease, it will not kill you. In my job I have seen people suffering from horrendous things but not having a child is not like dying in agony of cancer.

I have rheumatoid arthritis. It won't kill me. Should I not have treatment on the NHS because it's not comparable to dying of cancer?
(Arthritis is agony btw, but as someone who has also had 2 failed attempts of private IVF I can tell you that the physical agony of arthritis is on a par with the mental and emotional agony of infertility)

I feel for you. I had /have unexplained infertility

Ttc for 10yrs

I met someone who had children tho in their 20’s I lost my nhs go

Which meant we had to pay for ivf

Yes obv it costs lots and always a risk of failure

And people don’t like to save borrow loan for ivf as no guarantee at end

Not like getting a loan for a car or new kitchen etx

All I can say is if the nhs doesnt happen then save borrow or loan

We had 4 failed ivf but the 5th worked But in all our daughter cost us £27k and still paying her off - now 3yrs

I do think everyone should have one nhs go at ivf if one of the couple have Infertility issues

Seems unfair I lost my go as someone I fell in love with had kids decades ago

Yet I know someone who had 4 goes on nhs

Not unreasonable at all OP. We were due to start (private) treatment again which has been put on hold too. Hope you can get going with it all again soon.

Ignore the mean comments OP. None of these issues are black and white.

No one has a right to have a child and if you cannot get pregnant naturally then you should go private and pay.

Literally how is it more acceptable to say this than it is to say "no one has a right to have a child and if you cannot pay to raise them then you should not get pregnant naturally"?

I agree and disagree with you. Infertility is not a disease. Infertility os a symptom of a wide variety of problems of different origins. Some are easily treated while others are not. The end result - the inability to have children - can be extremely traumatic.

People struggle with the existence of IVF on the NHS for a number of reasons. It doesn't treat the cause of the infertility - it only treats the symptom; the infertility is often not something that affects a person's health in any other way - it doesn't reduce their life expectancy etc; IVF is extremely inefficient - the healthy live birth stats do not reveal the truth, which is that not all of those children are truly healthy (eg a child who is born with Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome can enter the stats as a healthy live birth); the NHS has finite funds so using those funds for IVF will seem frivolous to someone who has been denied an expensive but effective new cancer drug that could give them another 5 or more years with their kids.

That said, the NHS does a lot of things that are not lifesaving. For me, as some one lucky enough to have had my own kids without a hitch, I don't feel qualified to have an opinion on NHS IVF. All I can say is that, given you were promised it, that promise should be fulfilled as soon as possible.

You are not being unreasonable, OP. Some people have a serious lack of empathy and I imagine the majority of them already have children of their own.

Infertility can be an extremely painful thing to go through and I absolutely believe that IVF should be funded on the NHS. The current postcode lottery system on the NHS is unfair and going private is so expensive that it's out of reach for many people who by the time they've saved enough the years have rolled on making it even harder to get pregnant.

I actually don't understand why IVF finding is so controversial and can't get my head around why some people feel so strongly that it shouldn't be available on the NHS. It just seems like a cold hearted and cruel way of thinking to me.

I have a friend who has diabetes and is entitled to free treatment for that despite the fact that he drinks more nights of the week than he doesn’t, has an appalling diet and does very little exercise. But still entitled to free prescriptions and diabetes check ups and will have any treatment funded for any future issues that may crop up because of his diabetes. Being overweight also puts him at more risk of certain cancers, heart disease, all kinds of other issues, as does his drinking. But he is still entitled to all his treatment becasue that’s what the NHS provides.
I think it is awful that IVF isn’t funded for those desperate for child, when he can get all his medications and any treatment He needs funded despite not following any kind of guidance about a healthy lifestyle.

I’m not surprised you are angry.

The problem is that infertility is not a disease, it can be caused by disease, can be congenital but mostly it's due to the natural aging process. I have friends who needed ivf, I saw the pain they had when they didn't conceive but when it comes to finite resources, including infertility treatment in the nhs is up for debate as are the parameters for its inclusion eg upper age limit. I'm not sure what I personally think but I can see that it's a debate