Do you believe IVF is ok?

[Ididivfama]

I’ve been reading a lot of the surrogacy threads recently (and I know that is a different topic) but I was curious to mumsnet posters ideas of ethics and ivf. You can see from my name that we ended up doing it, but I won’t be horribly offended by different views. I’m more curious.

Obviously it’s ’unnatural’ as a process and there is the issue of what happens to any extra blastocysts (I use the term blastocyst as they are pre-embryo stage and calling them embryos makes people view it differently - at least I did!) Even so, would you count leaving blastocysts to decay as abortion? I never did but I’ve read that view now so I’m curious as to how many people view it like that.

As is pointed out on the surrogacy threads - no one is ‘entitled’ to have a child. Is that the same for us ivf parents?

Yes, same situation.... I don't think nature is as picky as some people seem to imagine!

None of the medical interventions mentioned by above posters are creating another human life to ease the upset of fully grown adults. That's what's different between chemo/glasses/antibiotics.

I know that sounds cruel, but when you boil it down to brass tacks isn't infertility the only intense 'want' that is treated medically rather than mentally?

That being said, I don't have an issue with IVF (I actually think it shouldn't be a paid for service at all as that just swings in favour of wealthy parents), don't have an issue with discarding blastocysts - but I do take issue with surrogacy and there apparently being an age limit that can be exceeded.

I agree to an extent. (My IVF was self funded)

Do you have a problem with tax payers paying for NHS treatments for obesity / smoking?

Of course you adopted at least one of these “many unwanted babies” then?

On balance, I don't have a massive issue with IVF as an 'ethical' (or not) choice but I don't believe that the NHS should offer it at the current time - nor until it can be properly and fully funded (ha ha ha ha ha etc) to provide for other, and often much more basic and simple, surgery & procedures and life-improving interventions that so many people spend an extended amount of time waiting for. However, I do understand that, even if the NHS decided to stop funding fertility treatment today, it probably wouldn't mean little old ladies would get their hip operations or knee replacements any faster because of the myriad and convoluted ways the NHS is funded.

I've thought about the NHS providing surgery/procedures/interventions for 'mental health' reasons as opposed to simply letting medical needs play out and determine who survives or not. I don't feel that NOT being able to have a child through natural means constitutes a mental health need in the same way as, say, losing your mobility, sight, hearing, compromised use of limbs/losing a limb, suffering from constant debilitating cluster headaches - all of which, I would argue, are life-limiting and would cause a person to lose the ability to continue to live their lives in the way they had previously enjoyed and would wish to continue to do so.

I'm not including life-threatening and terminal or more 'serious' life-limiting examples, here, such as developing cancer, MND, MS, dementia or Alzheimer's - as I don't believe the mental health need - nor the 'damage' done to one's overall mental wellbeing can usefully be compared to the emotional 'pain' of not being able to have a child. It's apples and oranges - a yearning for a child and, with it, ideas and hopes as to how a woman may have envisaged her life and future - as opposed to living with the prognosis of a life-threatening or terminal illness as your quality of life very tangibly and negatively diminishes over time - and which can also very deeply affect your wider family.

However, I don't feel it's unfair to assume that many women can make progress, move on and, to a greater extent, 'get over' their desire for a child. I don't believe it's uncaring of me to think that the 'pain' of not being able to have a child does alleviate, and doesn't tend to remain as all-encompassing or traumatic as the years go by as it was at the time of suffering round after round of unsuccessful IVF treatment and, potentially, miscarriages or other medical events that caused upset and trauma at the time they occurred.

I've thought about this a lot as I've family and friends who have tried IVF - with both successful and unsuccessful outcomes - and it's certainly a case of individual character to say that the one who did not conceive through IVF and remained childless, although extremely disappointed, made changes and adaptions to her life plans to ensure that the emotional and mental stress and 'pain' of not being able to conceive didn't preclude her from moving forward and enjoying a full and satisfying life.

You may feel this way, but it is in fact the opposite. There is a small increase in the rate of SEN and prematurity in babies concieved by IVF.

There is some natural selection in natural conception itself "fittest" egg is released " fittest" sperm fertilises it.

Modern medicine absolutely interferes with natural selection, allowing people to live and pass on genes who would otherwise have died. But none of the world that we have built especially post-industrialisation is natural; we live quite out-of-step with our biology.

IVF is therefore an unnatural solution to an unnatural world. For example, one cause of reduced fertility is declining sperm quality, which is likely due to a number of environmental and economic factors, such as oestrogenic pollution, sedentary lifestyles, stress etc.

At the other end of life, obsession with treating disease such as heart disease ends up with people living longer and developing dementia. We may think we are doing the right thing in the moment because we can’t bear to witness suffering (and it may be the best option), but all technological advances have consequences. I think we look for the quickest way to alleviate suffering in the now, when all we might be doing is delaying suffering, rather than seeing if we can address the root cause of the problem.

I'm not saying there isn't a net benefit to technology even if new problems are created however. It's probably quite subjective.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1NK2WY/#:~:text=(Reuters%20Health)%20%2D%20Parents%20who,help%2C%20an%20Australian%20study%20suggests.

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004148#:~:text=Large%20cohort%20studies%20have%20suggested,techniques%20%5B9%E2%80%9313%5D.

IVF is ok in some circumstances imho. I think it's fine if you are using it for medical reasons eg preimplantation testing for genetic diseases or where you have frozen embryos etc prior to medical treatment such as chemo. But what I don't think is right is the use of 3rd party donors because the mum is too old to conceive naturally, I believe the limit is 42 for nhs which seems reasonable for an upper age limit

Yes, but embryos - viable humans may have been destroyed. I have issues with that.

I have no issue with either IVF or surrogacy. As long as the surrogacy is entirely consensual and isn't done for any kind of monetary gain. Even then, it isn't really any of my business. Her body, her choice.

I have not had IVF but have no issue with it. Im firmly in the abortion "as early as poss as late as necessary" camp so disposing of blastocysts is not an issue for me (altho afaik so few embryos are made that most are used up). I am also pro mediciene, if we left things up to nature i would probably have died during pregnancy so quite pleased we aren't just doing "survival of the fittest" anymore.

Re funding - i personally could pay for it if needed but i think that we all need to be able to benefit from society in order to be invested into paying into it. Removing access for people just means people turn private more easily and care less about the nhs (my old plan actually covered 1 x IVF attempt).

Interestingly I'm hearing of American companies offering egg freezing as part of employee benefits - presumably to keep women working longer, this is one aapect that women need to carefully consider might be a "down side" of ivf when family planning.

With surrogacy you've got issues like people from impoverished backgrounds being taken advantage of and "rented", international issues like conflicting laws, even in altruistic surrogacy you've got risks to the mum and the foetus during pregnancy, what happens if the adoptive family change their mind? What happens if something tragically happened to the adoptive family and the surrogate did not want the child/ren? What if during or after birth the surrogate developed a lifelong limiting condition or even death just to fulfil someone's desire to have a child? What about the baby at the end of it who has a real physiological connection to the mother it has known and been connected to for just shy of 10 months?

You don't have these issues with IVF.

I'm not against IVF as a procedure, however I'm in 2 minds about whether I agree with it being offered on the NHS.

I'm infertile and ended up adopting. I was uncomfortable with ivf for myself.

I know two people pregnant through egg donors and one women who donated her eggs at university and then became infertile through Endo and probably being pumped full of hormones to donate.

Sperm and egg donation should be treated like adoption to me. I'm also adopted and feel uncomfortable about children coming into this world deliberately not knowing where they came from.

@BassoContinuo This is my view too. I don't agree with NHS funded IVF and certainly don't agree with surrogacy.

But they weren’t necessarily viable. They’re not even embryos yet.

One difference between IVF and many medical interventions, is that subfertility/infertility is not a disease itself but a condition in which a woman can't become pregnant that could be due to a single disease eg. endometriosis, or a combination, including problems that we don't necessarily label as diseases. We don't have the means to effectively treat the endometriosis itself for example, through drugs to control the spread of tissue or surgery to unblock the fallopian tubes. But we can go straight to IVF because it is a well-established way to achieve the goal of pregnancy for a whole suite of problems. I think this might influence how some people view IVF provision on the NHS.

@notanothernana all my embryos perished on defrosting - devastating for myself and dh but hopefully reassuring for those pretending that they’re “viable humans” that no actually they weren’t at all.

How do you know they are viable humans? Unless you get them tested many may have issues. I had one miscarriage from one embryo transfer. That was possibly chromosomal abnormalities.

So anyone that has a chemical pregnancy because of too much coffee or something....

Did you see my comment upthread about the contraceptive coil? That also destroys fertilised embryos (on up to a monthly basis). Do you feel similarly that the coil is unethical?

I have 2 children, both grown up and I've sometimes wondered what lengths I would have gone to had I had fertility issues.
I've never had the "longing" for children, possibly because it happened quickly for me at a time i decided I wanted them.
I have no issue with IVF, ethically in general. I also have no issue with it being funded because, to me, we could find a way to negate loads of treatments where the cause could be blamed on lifestyle/diet/sports/whatever. Who is worthy of treatments?

I had IVF and fully support the ethics/morals of it in many circumstances but i absolutely don't agree in use of egg or sperm donors. I also don't think IVF should be available for older parents or single ones either.

Surrogacy is an abomination.

But if IVF is achieved with your own eggs, I don't think that's an exploitative process.

Ditto to this poster – what are your views on the contraception coil? It allows sperm and egg to fertilise and become an embryo. But then it essentially "kills" them by stopping them implanting.

Presumably you're also against certain forms of contraception - like the coil - that work like this?