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

[Yaerry]

or am I just naive? Watched the new documentary about Jean Purdy and I’m surprised there was so much push back at the time. It’s made me wonder if one day surrogacy will be more accepted? I thought ivf was just a standard thing now that wasn’t controversial.

Would you feel differently if embryo adoption was more readily available/talked about ?

(I don’t actually know how I feel about it so I’m not advocating for or against - I suppose I’d love more children but don’t know if it’s biologically on the cards for me so I’d happily give an embryo or two a home! But equally have always hoped to foster and not sure said home has enough rooms and those are children who are already born - and given my professional background, I’m very well equipped to support)

Well I kind of get what your saying.

But it's a bit like saying we shouldn't bother about treating asthmatics or worrying about kids with allergies because they'll only reproduce with kids with the same issues or worse.

Many women would not have a healthy life without ivf.

But if the argument is that renting your womb is different because it entails potential physical harm, then obviously men are traditionally more affected on that front given the amount of manual labour, military roles etc where they essentially rent their muscles.

I would argue that the pressures to do any sort of job that the middle classes find horrifying needs a class analysis more than a gender analysis. I don't feel pressured to rent my womb out, as a woman, because my middle class privilege affords me plenty of other options. If you're saying surrogacy is uniquely exploitative of an oppressed class, the anti-surrogacy logic surely extends to abolishing the military etc?

But while I personally find working-class men and women being bought as human cannon fodder to be horrifying, I also know many of those soldiers not only signed up willingly but took pride in doing so and loved their jobs. I think it's best not to assume any job I find distasteful is inherently exploitative or oppressive, and instead to ensure that all jobs are regulated and their workers protected according to their own metrics.

Yeah I would feel differently about that. I’m not at all against adoption, fostering etc in fact I think it’s a wonderful thing. I’m just not comfortable with destroying embryos or aborting unborn babies.

I think IVF is amazing, but not a one size fits all service. I’m against multiple rounds of funded IVF when there isn’t the money for essential services like cancer treatment. I also don’t think it should be a postcode lottery.

They will always know one or both of their biological parents did not want them.

This is complete rubbish - being a donor is not about giving up a child you don’t want?! And more recent studies show that when donation is ID release (possibility for donor child to contact the donor when they are older), there is never any secrecy around the child’s conception and it doesn’t come as a surprise, and donors donate altruistically (in many countries it is illegal to pay a donor beyond expenses) that the children are very well adjusted..

So many people are posting on this thread based on outdated or just completely fabricated / anecdotal information. If you don’t know about a subject, either do your research to develop an informed opinion or stay out of it. You don’t have to comment.

but by your reasoning we should withdraw all mental Heath services from the NHS?

I am eternally grateful that ivf was invented. I had my one and only child after my one and only pregnancy at age 28 after 1 go with ivf. I had great egg quality but two blocked tubes. Used my dh sperm. Dd is 13 now and I've never used contraception and never been pregnant again. Without ivf we wouldn't have had the joy of our dd in our lives.
Our small family is very healthy. Never had hospitalisations, not been to the GP in 10 years. I pay for private medical insurance and have used it for things like physio and removing a mole. Dh and I are higher rate taxpayers. We have more than paid into the nhs to get back that one Ivf try we got.

Due to my age I had IVF 'lite'. Only produced 5 eggs, 3 fertilised, 2 stopped developing and 1 was excellent quality- now my dd. No embryos left to freeze.

I am totally against surrogacy in all situations as the thought of a baby being separated from their mother (under these circumstances) is just shameful.

Good luck to anyone currently going through ivf.

But these days women are soldiers too. We're not quite at the stage of giving men the womb technology. 😁

I think both gender and class analysis are required.

How much real choice is there when choice/opportunity is limited?

Well that goes to the heart of it doesn't it - what does choice in a capitalist system even mean?

Brings us back to that anarcho-communist utopia.

The vast majority of the companies buying donor eggs exploit vulnerable women and completely underplay the risks. They are commercial entities who are mainly concerned with profit.

Obviously I don't get to tell you what you can and cannot do but equally you don't get to tell me what I can think or what opinions I can express.

I wish there was better info about options for embryo adoption- it’s quite sad to think there are women who would love the opportunity to carry and all those embryos just sat there (IIRC they are running out of storage) - obviously there’s need for therapeutic support for all parties involved but I am surprised it’s not more widely discussed . I’m not even sure how I’d go about it and I’m open to it!

Also once filled in a form with a Mum who referred to her tween child’s father in front of him as “some black guy I met in local night club”. How in any way would that child be more impacted by their father being a sperm donor because Mum wanted him so much? I know what I’d rather my story was!

@adviceneeded1990

Exactly and so would I. I egg shared for the first two of my 6 IVF cycles (keep your hair on ladies I paid privately - no NHS funds were used to rectify the mistakes the NHS made when operating on my husband and thus rendering him infertile!) at no point was I coerced or pressured into doing so. I actively chose it for myself. In 2000 I went on a Travel & Tourism residential to Majorca with college. My friend shagged a barman in a shrub, no idea who he was and at 17 was pregnant with a man she didn't know and whom the child hasn't got a chance of ever meeting. So, which is best my eggs helping to make a living couple a Mum & Dad or a 17 year old producing an unwanted child after a shag in a bush?

Absolutely not. My issue around surrogacy (and I am not saying I am 100% against it, as such) is that once the baby is born, they are a human with human rights and they are given away in a way that they are not with planned adoption. The latter of which almost never happens in the U.K. because the babies who are removed from the birthing mother are against the choice of the mother.

But who's paying for the storage?
The clinic I went to storage for 1 or 2 years was included in the IVF price.
I remember having DC2 in my arms when the letter came in asking for payment for the next year or the alternatives.

I also think there is a max of 10 years they can be frozen.

Various people opposed to IVF on the thread with no articulation as to why? I’ve never really seen a logical argument against (own gamete) IVF.

Embryo destruction- not logical, an embryo cannot feel anything, most embryos in IVF don’t make it anyway through being poor quality and either failing to grow or struggling to implant. Any couple TTC could be making embryos that die that they won’t even know about as they simply didn’t grow properly or implant inside the body. The use of potentially viable embryos in scientific research is necessary.

Nature’s way- as is cancer, heart disease etc etc but we treat those.

Overpopulation - the make or break for this will not be IVF. Actually in the wealthier countries where IVF will be more prevalent population is generally decreasing.

Adoption available- very different from IVF, not a solution for infertility, fertile couples could do this too.

Adoption is another mine field.

Couples who adopt need far more support than they are given when dealing with tweens and teens who shout things at them like "your not my real mum".

It's not the piece of cake it's made out to be.

i think that’s the ‘point’ behind embryo adoption - people end up with more embryos than they need , don’t want to or can’t afford to pay for ongoing storage, so the embryo gets destroyed. With embryo adoption, a potential family ‘ adopts’ the embryo and takes on all storage and transfer costs.

sadly, I wasn’t in the position to have extra embryos - so if I want another child, I would either have to go through the whole process again - or I could give a home to an existing embryo - taking on all the associated costs. Arguably it’s a good option for people who struggle to make good quality embryos, have genetic reasons for pursuing IVF . And for people who have the ‘life begins at conception’ mindset - it’s more ethical than creating new embryos

Or they are clinics abroad in countries where fertility treatment is not regulated, who target and exploit vulnerable poor women to donate their eggs or sell their womb space to attract wealthy fertility tourists from countries where it is more regulated and controlled. Remember all the surrogate-born babies who were trapped in Ukraine when Russia invaded as their commissioning parents could not collect them?

Don’t get me wrong I am entirely in favour of IVF being provided in a controlled and regulated way both in the NHS and privately.

Sorry I think embryos adoption is up there with donor egg and sperm.
I think it's wrong.

My spares went to research, really training other embryologists. Putting them up for adoption wasn't an option due to my age.

But the thought of my kids having a full genetic sibling born to another family is just plain weird.
And I've no doubt children born in this way will track down bio family in the future causing all sorts of weird family dynamics.

For many people it is something you never get over. I don't think it is helpful to position it as something women can just get over.

I plan to foster/adopt so I suppose my viewpoint is very different as it’s entirely possible my future children will have full siblings in other families and that will be part of our family dynamics. I’d hate to not offer a child a home because of ‘weirdness’

my own children are donor conceived - the one who is born is very proud of her identity! Raising with openness, pride and compassion goes a long way (especially from back in the day when it was very hush hush and undoubtedly caused difficulties!)

Where's the actual proof for this then?

We went through the IVF process and have one beautiful daughter because of it. For various reasons we chose not to have another so we're left with the decision of what to do with the remaining 3 embryos. We froze them for many years for exactly the reason of not wanting to let them go. We had counselling provided by the clinic and my thoughts were , I've got what I want now ( my daughter) so the embryos felt surplus to requirement ,it felt awful , it nearly broke me to think that I was casting them aside as unwanted. I knew what they could potentially grow into as I had my daughter. But they may not have worked and if I had two put back what about the third. Embryo adoption wasn't an option then ( not that I would have done that) and as much as I am eternally grateful for all those that went before me so I could have a child , research wasn't right for us either. So we took them to a special place of ours , kissed them told them we were sorry and buried them under a tree. I don't regret the decision but it still pains me now 15 years later. Thing is everyone's journey is different and we should respect the decisions made by those people along the way regardless of whether we agree with them or not 💕