Article in the Guardian. Fertility discrimination.

The NHS has been buckling for years, and ivf is costly.

I don’t know what the cis word is doing in a debate about ivf. Why is it even there? This seems framed by another agenda.

*infertile - NOT inferior.

Just wanted to be clear that this was a typing error and not a personally held view.

The WHO disagrees with you. It is a disease.

Then is age a disease?

Women who seek fertility treatment due to being outside of the prime fertility window must have a disease then, according to the WHO...

I believe it was Julie Bindel who found that the WHO also considers single men to be infertile. I guess they have the same disease, only it's not down to age, for them it's because they are male and, like the couple in the OP, lack the biology in a partner (being single he would have no partner) to conceive.

So by this argument single people and same-sex couples are inferior in the same way a heterosexual couple outside of their fertile years are, in the same way that a woman who survived childhood cancer is.

The WHO, queering infertility for 2021.

The NHS provides many treatments that aren’t disease related that otherwise substantially improve QOL for the recipient.

You won’t be ill or die if you’re unable to have children. You just won’t have children. I don’t think the NHS should be funding anything that doesn’t cause illness or death.

Should donor sperm / eggs be available on NHS. I don't think so. Should they be allowed at all I think that's an ethical question that should be debated.
People might look back and think that people were playing God with some of this stuff.

Anyway infertility isn’t a disease so I don’t think anyone should be getting free IVF on the NHS.

Infertility can be the result of cancer, its not unusual for young people about to undertake treatment to have sperm / eggs frozen for a later date.

PCOS, fibroids, endometriosis, anemia are all diseases, thyroid and liver problems can also interfere with a womans ability to conceived some of these will be resolved by drugs rather than IVF.

So I don't have a big issue with fertility investigation being on the NHS, nor do I have an issue with IVF being used.

I think it would be pretty shit to be the Doc to tell a 20 year old, you have cancer, we think we have it early enough, treatment will make you infertile, we can store your sperm / eggs but you'll need to fund IVF yourself later.

There's a reasonable question, though, whether providing donor gametes is really the same thing as solving the medical problem.

I agree with that. I really don’t think the NHS should provide donor eggs or sperm, and that’s as someone who looked like I needed them at one point.

The stories of how adult donor conceived children feel about their genetics can be heart breaking & it shouldn’t be normalised.

Infertility can be caused by disease or damage to the body, so it isn't functioning properly. So, a medical issue, in such cases.

There's a reasonable question, though, whether providing donor gametes is really the same thing as solving the medical problem.

www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/infertility

Well that is a puzzle. If you’re a lesbian, how to prove infertility? I don’t think it’s discrimination to require that, before the taxpayer spends many thousands of pounds on IVF (which costs £5-10k per attempt and on average takes 3 attempts), the woman asking for it should at least have tried to get pregnant without taxpayer help. I would have thought the obvious option would be to buy donor sperm and keep trying a DIY effort.

It’s a funny old world.

Don’t like how the guardian implies this is about sexuality, nhs fertility treatment has always been discrimatory, for example some postcodes get 3 ivf attempts some do not, some fund ivf for those with stepchildren other nhs areas do not…

Feels like more Stonewall agenda-pushing in media when actually the elephant in the room on that story is that the country is broke, the nhs is underfunded and overstretched l, and maybe the top funding priority for tax payers should not be sex changes for people with confused feelings and impregnating people who aren’t willing to first try conceiving without taxpayer money.

Neither of them is infertile so I don’t see why they need infertility treatment. Anyway infertility isn’t a disease so I don’t think anyone should be getting free IVF on the NHS.

And as for the flipping guardian and it’s ‘women and people with wombs’ and c*, they can get lost

To be fair to the guardian they’re mentioning what someone else stated. Though I wouldn’t put it pass them not to use this term to describe a group.

Not to derail but I don’t get what’s wrong with the term “female”. The same crowd who use terms like “people with wombs” go on about how sex and gender are different but they don’t like using sex specific terms for sex issues.

The NHS doesn’t provide donor gametes or sperm to heterosexual couples and it shouldn’t provide the same to same sex couples. The NHS also doesn’t allow women to have IVF if their partner has any surviving children, so it’s wrong to say only gay and single people are discriminated against.

Arguably, they could qualify for IVF after 6 months (vs 2 years for heterosexual couples) if both partners did IUI each month.

The reason these ladies are pushing is because they want reciprocal IVF where one female partner supplies the egg, the other the womb, and donor sperm is used for conception. It’s a choice rather than infertility.

[quote SinoohXaenaHide]@YetAnotherProcrastinator that's interesting yes. Ok I concede that it is discriminatory if the NHS doesn't recognise the evidence of informal self-insemination efforts failing. They don't require heterosexual couples to prove that they have been at it like bunnies during their unsuccessful TTC after all, they just take it on trust that the couple have been doing their level best to TTC during the relevant period. So yes informal efforts using sperm from relatives or friends should be recognised as counting towards proof of infertility (if those methods fail) when lesbians and single women TTC. What I was arguing against was the idea that there should be a shortcut to IVF for women who haven't attempted to conceive without IVF.[/quote]
Round here, you can get fertility tests on the NHS to establish whether IVF is needed. I'm not sure whether there needs to be likely infertility (eg. gynaecological condition), or whether it's just standard for lesbians/single women. But you definitely don't have to prove attempted conception beforehand.

I don't know enough about the tests to know how reliable they are though. But this is surely an option before a lesbian couple opt for IUI or IVF?

I was surprised to see Stonewall involved in this too tbh but maybe Stonewall see this as a chance to show publicly that they’re not actively undermining lesbians all the time and that they are willing to listen to (cherrypicked) issues that affect lesbians, once in a blue moon maybe? Hard not to be extremely cynical of their involvement.

I often wonder if there is a hidden agenda to the supposed crucial and “life saving” use of drugs and surgeries which result in sterilisation of teenagers for gender identity affirmation while transitioners in their 40’s, 50’s and older can just wear different clothes, change hairstyle, name etc without the need for medication or surgery.

Breaking down barriers to using women’s bodies to make money, dehumanising women commodification of human beings, not thinking of what is best for babies.

It does seem that there is a push to redefine infertility not as a medical condition but as something else, not having a baby perhaps?

Strangely there is an anti abortion movement appearing among certain groups of young LGBTQIA++ activists and I fear this may be connected too.

So the idea is emerging that the NHS or the state should provide people with a newborn baby? A right to a baby for all adults? That “uterus havers” (and “sperm producers”) or intact and healthy women and men should be recruited for this. It is a bit disturbing.

It can be difficult for lesbians and single women in some areas to prove their infertility because of the requirement for attempts to be through a clinic. I expect this is for verification/safety (and money?) reasons

I think this is a good point, but I guess allowing this to be considered would push more women towards the legal minefield of private donation, as well as the safety implications, and the NHS would probably be criticised as irresponsible for encouraging it. The HFEA doesn’t recommend this method without independent legal advice for donor and woman, as well as medical screening of the donor.

@YetAnotherProcrastinator that's interesting yes. Ok I concede that it is discriminatory if the NHS doesn't recognise the evidence of informal self-insemination efforts failing. They don't require heterosexual couples to prove that they have been at it like bunnies during their unsuccessful TTC after all, they just take it on trust that the couple have been doing their level best to TTC during the relevant period. So yes informal efforts using sperm from relatives or friends should be recognised as counting towards proof of infertility (if those methods fail) when lesbians and single women TTC. What I was arguing against was the idea that there should be a shortcut to IVF for women who haven't attempted to conceive without IVF.

For those who mention the turkey baster method - I think one thing that hasn't been mentioned so far is that in some areas, it is not possible for lesbian and single women to "prove" their infertility without paying thousands for multiple IUIs (inseminations through a clinic). This is because the old-fashioned "turkey baster" method, or trying for months and months with a male gay friend or something, is not accepted by all areas as evidence of having tried to get pregnant (and therefore, when it fails, of possible infertility which needs investigating). Therefore straight couples need only try via sex for six months/a year/whatever, but a lesbian couple or single woman may be told that her private attempts with a male friend do not "count" and that there needs to be a verifiable track record from a clinic of x number of iui attempts with a donor/friend who is not her partner. To me that seems a bit unfair, whatever one's beliefs about NHS funding for fertility treatment, as a single woman or lesbian couple may well have tried for a year but is being forced down a very expensive privately paid medical route before accessing funding for fertility issues they may well have. It can be difficult for lesbians and single women in some areas to prove their infertility because of the requirement for attempts to be through a clinic. I expect this is for verification/safety (and money?) reasons, but the net result is that lesbian and single women with fertility issues (and they do have exist!) may find it difficult to access any funding or treatment that is there. That said, I can see possible issues with verifying that these informal inseminations have taken place, but it's not an insurmountable problem. It's also not possible anymore to have sperm from a bank delivered to your home address, which means that that route has to be through a clinic.

Which is obviously not cost free but neither is raising a child.