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

I'll bite. Smoking is a lifestyle choice
Drinking is a lifestyle choice
Eating too much fatty food is a lifestyle choice
Lying in the sun for hours getting sunburnt and skin damaged is a lifestyle choice
Cycling a bike is a lifestyle choice, hope you don't get in a accident
Running marathons and needing a knee replacement - lifestyle choice.

Where exactly do you suggest we draw the line.

Surprised to see so many comments about infertility being nature's way of controlling the surplus population etc. By that logic is cancer or other terminal or life-shortening diseases also a way of controlling the surplus population? There are treatments available to support such conditions. They end life, infertility prohibits life being created. Infertility is a disease, IVF is a treatment.

Equally, for those talking about "purchasing" a baby through surrogacy, you do know that in the UK it's against the law to pay for surrogacy (beyond out of pocket expenses)?

Finally, for those doubting the devastating impact of fertility on a woman's (and often a man's) mental health need to listen to the women on this very board who have experienced it and especially those who have been through IVF. It's a gruelling, incredibly invasive and emotionally, physically and mentally exhausting process and no one would put themselves through it were they not suffering with the impact of the disease of infertility.

It's very easy to say "I wouldn't do it" or that you don't agree with it being funded on nhs but unless you've lived it you'll never know how it impacts every aspect of your life.

In the US it's very common for classifieds pages in university newspapers to list 'egg donor wanted' advertisements. The more prestigious the university the higher the pay. I briefly considered doing it: $5000-$10000 for donating a few eggs was pretty tempting to 21-year old me.

I think egg and sperm donation should be banned because children have a right to know who they come from.

IVF I'm fine with.

Parents who adopt aren't heros. I adopted because I wanted to be a mom. I needed a baby, and my baby needed a mother. Simple as that. He's the great love of my life. 💖

I'm also adopted.

100%. The NHS spends far more on the consequences of other lifestyle choices.

Is it just the case that money talks?

Very easy for you to say unless you experience the pain of infertility. I'm fairly sick of the "why don't you just adopt brigade" (who generally have their own biological children) commenting on topics that they don't understand.

There is. I had stored embryos & once they reached 10 years of storage the HFEA ordered them destroyed. (this was in Scotland in 2016). I was 48 & my NHS clinic said I was 'too old' anyway (though this may vary clinic to clinic).
I found it very upsetting & an unforseen side issue of IVF, for which I am very grateful or I would not have my children.

Yes it is. I don't have the figures the fertility network quoted but it was a significant percentage struggled with mental health.

Like smoking and obesity and people who break limbs doing dangerous sports?

Some of the comments on this thread are absolutely bananas. I am an ivf baby and have two siblings who are too. I have no health issues and conceived myself with no problems, as did one of my siblings and the other hasn’t tried yet. None of us has any health issues and our parents are still fit and healthy.

My parents were unable to have children naturally due to my father having some form of varicocele and needing assistance with his sperm getting to the egg. They were lucky they could afford ivf and are very happy with the outcome. They are excellent parents and have given us a wonderful life, much more so than plenty of “natural” conceptions.

I have never seen any credible evidence to suggest that IVF babies are more likely to have health issues.

I had my child via IVF. I live outside the UK and they make it incredibly difficult for anyone who isn't a citizen of the country I live in to adopt, so no matter how many children are in care I would have ultimately ended up childless. (Surrogacy is actually illegal here but wasn't an option we ever considered)

Why?
why shouldn’t a woman be untitled to ifv if for example she has a medical issue that meant her tubes had to be removed

if she is well off she gets to have a child if she is only working class she doesn’t?

There are so many posts on this so I don’t know if anyone else has said this but generally the donor has had IVF themselves and over produced eggs which are then frozen for potential donation.

Maybe somewhere some donors may go about it without needing IVF themselves, but most likely they are spare. It’s adopting an unused egg, it’s not creating one on purpose.

Of course if some women are paid for those eggs that’s a bit strange. As it’s an incentive to share something you may not have wanted to.

But I think that in the depths of IVF, if you are lucky enough to have overproduced eggs, and you realise the pain other women are going through - especially those who can’t produce good quality eggs, you do start to feel pretty altruistic towards others.

@Ohhbaby can't you see how dangerous the thinking behind your post is?

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.

Abit like how some women try for years with a partner. Split and are pregnant instantly with a new man. Just incompatible biologically for a reason normally. Couples who only ever have males/females not the other is because that’s the best genetics they have.

Are we just building up problems creating humans that where never meant to exist. A bit like how most males with down syndrome are infertile while the females tend to still be fertile, why it’s male older ages that have started to be a factor towards sen in todays population.

Access to ivf is incredibly unfair in this country and it should’ve made more widely available.
It is another example of where the nhs treat woman’s problems as lower priority.
for example if a woman’s partner has a child with someone else she is not entitled to ivf even if it is needed for a medical problem of hers

But if your body made these embryos naturally then it would do the same. Many very early embryos don't implant. Many go on to not form a heartbeat. An embryo that isn't healthy wouldn't make a baby anyway. That's why they are tested.

A different matter entirely is some people, who have completed their family, end up with surplus embryos from ivf which have been tested and found to be viable. Viable doesn't mean that embryo will have certainly been a child, only about a 30% chance. Some people might donate these embryos or implant them at a different time of the month. Sometimes they are discarded as people don't want their genetic material stored indefinitely. Often this is a very emotional decision but these are NOT the couples definate future children they are just the possibility a future child.

I think if you are very strictly pro choice and oppose abortion before even a heartbeat has been detected (which is stricter than states like Florida with very strict abortion laws) then you might have a case for opposing ivf. However people should really get their facts straight.

There's a crazy amount of misinformation on this thread - in fact, the only thing you can conclude from posts like the above is that people know very little about IVF.

Unless you do Pre-implantation genetic testing, which is not the norm in the UK, selecting the healthiest embryo is just the one most likely to become a baby. It's entirely to do with success rates and not eugenics.

No it’s not true or else every IVF embryo that was put back would turn into a healthy pregnancy/live birth, which certainly isn’t the case. There’s no “know” about it, all you “know” is that the embryos have made it to day 5 and therefore have a chance at progressing to a live birth.

Agree with this too. I've never understood telling people to adopt children who are more likely to need experienced parents. Especially to people who are mentally recovering from an unsuccessful fertility journey.

I don’t agree with NHS funding for IVF. There isn’t enough money to fund lifestyle choices.

And more research/education and diagnosis.
I went to school in the 1980s/90s and looking back I'm pretty sure there were a few boys in our class that were ND, but then they just labelled as naughty or different.( I am the same age as the first ivf baby)

Was going to say the same

To me, it's a little bit like messing with nature, and whilst I'm not at all religious, it's not something I totally agree with.
I am infertile, and we chose not to pursue IVF when we found out we couldn't conceive naturally.