To ask if people today don’t agree with ivf?!

If you heard that someone was breeding puppies and selling them straight from birth because some humans wanted to buy them, would that be acceptable to you?

This is true (at least where I live)

It's not "natural." No medical treatment, intervention or assistance is.
But, thankfully, the advancements in medicine have given us medication to treat diabetes, high blood pressure, some cancers, arthritis and skin conditions like acne and psoriasis; surgeries for heart conditions and vascular conditions; organ removal and transplants; plastic surgery to correct physical deformities by birth or injury; orthopaedic surgery to fix hips and knees from accident or medical conditions; and so much more.

I wonder if all the other medical treatments are similarly unethical? What about cadaver donation? Tissue growth in lab for grafting? All very unnatural. It's quite subjective, really.

You also don’t know that PP didn’t go through counselling but still felt that way?

I don’t think lesbians are allowed IVF on the NHS unless there are fertility issues such as that straightforward artificial insemination would not work.

I think that’s quite a callous thing to say tbh. Someone has said the difficulty of IVF/infertility made them feel suicidal and you suggest someone struggling this way wouldn’t be a great parent anyway? I’m glad you are so solid and well adjusted but everyone reacts to things differently.

I was suicidal when experiencing fertility issues, not because of infertility itself, but because it really felt like everywhere I turned no one gave a flying fuck. That is, unless you were willing throw a lot of money their way. It was lonely. It was hard to keep going.

and the stigma that went with it made it a lot worse!

There is also the point that people are infertile for a reason nature wise. There is a reason two people cannot breed the same as any animal.

Please tell me you have never said this to anyone suffering from infertility.

Similar to my previous post. I worry the restrictions on embryo use could trap people in relationships they are no longer happy in. If you know breaking up would destroy your chances of being able to have children again and your frozen embryos it would make it very difficult to leave even if the relationship wasn’t going well

In that case they need therapy/counselling, ,not fertility treatment which may not work. Someone who may kill themself if they don’t have a baby is not going to make the best parent anyway. Said as someone who has experienced infertility and unsuccessful IVF.

Egg donation is a tricky one because it is difficult to be sure the doners are not in a vulnerable position.
IVF is not always easily available so some woman donate eggs to get a reduced cot round. I worry some might not be in a good place and have their head over a barrel

I don’t know the documentary you’re talking about, but yes, things have certainly changed a lot since the 70s/80s in regards to lots of health conditions. IVF meant you were infertile, and there was a lot of shame attached to infertility, which I don’t actually think has changed massively when we look at donor eggs and sperm now. There are still lots of babies being born today whose parents aren’t their biological parents, but no one is talking about it because it’s something that people feel ashamed about or uncomfortable admitting.

But if you think in the 80s with the stigma around cancer or HIV. People wouldn’t even say the word cancer and people with cancer could be shunned because people almost felt they would get cancer just from being around someone with it. Never mind the fears of contracting HIV from sharing cutlery, etc. We have a lot more information at our fingertips these days online and people can factcheck, but we also have a lot more support for people dealing with once stigmatised health conditions, so there is a lot more openness. People are still a bit weird about IVF and infertility though, as well as things like cancer, etc.

If a lesbian woman needs IVF because she has fertility issues and insemination hasn't worked then fine as long as she uses her own eggs. I don't agree with a lesbian having IVF on the NHS just because she wants to carry her wife's biological baby.

@Mumtobabyhavoc I think what they might be getting at is the difference in process for sperm vs egg donation.

sperm donation is a few mins in a locked room with porn and a cup. There are minimal risks to the donor of going through the process … indeed it’s one they might have done multiple times a week since adolescence.

Egg donation has much greater risks. Some of which can be fatal. In some cases these risks are not fully explained in advance. That brings up the question of informed consent.

I think that IVF should be available for 3 rounds on the NHS. There are plenty of people that could afford to bring up a child but not on top of the expense of private IVF. Where I live there is no provision for IVF on the NHS and the birth rate has really fallen. I don’t agree that people should be penalised for having fertility problems but a smaller wallet. I do think there should be stringent checks and there must be certain thresholds you meet before you go through with it.

I understand the concerns about surrogacy but feel that some of it is over inflated. My friend was a surrogate for a lovely couple, the baby was completely biologically theirs. She has a great relationship with the family and expressed breast milk for a year - he is now a very delightful and well adjusted primary school child.

Sex selection IVF though? Absolutely gross (unless for very good reason eg. Severe genetic issues running through males/females in the family)

And in Ukraine,before the war there.

I’m not convinced the use of donor eggs in ivf is ethical. The procedure for creation and harvesting is far too invasive.
How is the process far too invasive? It's a surgical procedure to remove the eggs, which by nature is invasive. Creating the eggs is done using medication that is typically injected.
People self-inject medication for various reasons every day and sometimes for life. Egg donation isn't that.
Harvesting the eggs is done in 10-15 minutes with anaesthesia and sedation.
I'm trying to understand you... maybe you don't accept anything done to your own body? Dental work? Vaccines? Smear test? Could you clarify?

Very interesting point. Lots of food for thought on this thread.

I sort of agree with those saying it shouldn't be available on the NHS but I was able to get pregnant naturally. If I hadn't and I'd been offered IVF on the NHS I'd have taken it so I'm being a massive hypocrite.

I suppose for me a big part of it was that our ‘diagnosis’ was unexplained infertility. There was nothing to ‘fix’ as such and no closure either.

While it’s fertility treatment that implies there’s something to treat. There wasn’t for us. Everything worked but it wasn’t working … not sure if that makes sense.

I have family members who disagree with IVF and think it’s unnatural. I was so scared I wouldn’t be able to conceive myself as I know they wouldn’t have supported me through IVF. Or at least not with their whole heart.

The quality of people’s lives would fall dramatically. Children walking around with broken arms, undiagnosed conditions. And yes this does happen in America. Poor people have very limited access to healthcare.

A hip replacement has become a routine procedure. Eg. It’s been done so often it is a practiced process. Nobody needing one sees it as routine! If it wasn’t treated it would eventually kill someone, or they themselves from the pain. And I hope for your sake that you never need one, or have to pay for one.

We pay taxes towards our own insurance within the NHS. Previous governments have kept tax down in order to win votes and have underfunded the NHS. This doesn’t mean we should race back to sub-standard healthcare.

I believe it was Dr Robert Winston who said just because we can do something it doesn’t mean we should. He was talking about infertility and treatments and mentioned one case of a woman who kept losing her babies until there was intervention. She had her baby who had multiple conditions and only lived a few years. Nature was aborting those babies for a reason.

This kind of thing makes me really sad. infertility without IVF is worse than the treatment. That is why the treatment exists.

There is so much misinformation out there about how hard and gruelling IVF is (and I don’t discount that is the case for those it doesn’t work for) that people are so scared they don’t try or reach out for help and go through years of agony and a lifetime of heartbreak

My story is not dissimilar to yours except I didn’t get lucky and did go through with the IVF. I regret I didn’t try years earlier. I built it up in my mind so much and was so scared of it I didn’t really believe it would ever work, like a last ditch stand.
i even had some of the “awful” complications and felt blessed not hurt by them because it meant something might actually be happening and it was.

My DD isn't 'someone else's baby'. She's mine. She was mine from before she was born.

Children have, historically, not been raised by their biological parents particularly consistently - this is how human society has functioned, and I really don't believe for a moment it suddenly needs to change.

If you think my child is my possession, would you think it was reasonable for me to sell my two year old to someone else?

I think there is a lot of waste in the nhs that has nothing to with treatments in terms of back office staffs and budgets. I think the nhs treat lots of medically avoidable issues related to smoking, drinking, obesity, do you think that treatment is not
medically necessary?