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.

I think you’re being extremely polite here. I’m actually aghast at some of the comments on this thread. There have been multiple examples of callousness, rudeness, misinformation, dismissiveness and downright cruelty. Those unable to conceive have been told to get over it, one poster vociferously claimed that this particular disability shouldn’t be funded though her own should be (and by the sounds of it, to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds), one got downright vicious when talking about the possibility of a loving sister being a surrogate as if there is no nuance at all. The mind boggles, truly. I am so, so lucky that I conceived all my children easily but I absolutely know that if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t just be able to ‘accept it’ but would have sold my soul for the chance to maybe conceive. To speak to and about women in that position with such a lack of compassion as has been demonstrated here is frankly horrifying. People do need to educate themselves, reflect, or in some cases just get a filter!

@Cantalever that's interesting - are you against abortion too? In the same vein that it is destroying a possibly viable embryo/baby.

@Runningupthecurtains I do think the NHS should fund investigations and treatment to improve fertility.
It is interesting you ask about whether the NHS should fund prosthetic legs, because the NHS only funds basic prosthetic legs. It was only in 2017 that the NHS began to fund prosthetic legs for children that allows them to play sports, and this has to be applied for.
I state this simply to illustrate that the NHS funds far less in other areas than much of the public seems to think. Infertility is not singled out.

"would have sold my soul for the chance to maybe conceive."
But is this not another downside of the increasing range of fertility treatments, like a double edge sword?

50 years ago if you were infertile then the only option was to grieve it and try to make the best of life. Then 40 years ago the option arrived to suffer through unpleasant treatment as many times as you could before you bankrupt yourself or got too old, then along came donor IVF, so know you need to keep selling your soul until your what, 60, maybe 70, once your start where do you stop. IVF is definitely a Pandora's box.

This is a thread asking whether the ethical side of IVF should still be up for discussion, so of course the thorny issues relating to it are going to keep coming up, and none of the answers are black and white.

There is ultimately a difference between treating an existing person and their medical condition and creating a new person that cannot even start to exist without medical intervention.

A broken arm needs fixing, a blood clot busting, help in a Delivery, a tube unlocking a ectopic removing.

But giving dangerous drugs to release eggs to harvest and mix with sperm to then watch under microscope and then pick the best freeze and discard the rest to then insert back in, doesn’t fix an issue it’s not clearing a tube or casting a break it’s creating something entirely.

And surrogacy is just using women as incubators as an added kick to the above.

That's just hyperbole. There's a difference between saying people can and do get over being infertile, and saying someone who is infertile should 'just get over it'. On the thread I've seen the former, not the latter.

I did struggle to conceive, we were lucky enough to get 2 NHS cycles (but no joy from those or any freezable embryos - our area would have also covered further implants if we did have some). My choice to use sedation rather than anaesthetic and the lack of freezable embryos means my treatment cost the NHS at lot less than many others being treated at the same clinic at the same time. Perhaps a little selfishly I would argue that rather than a prescriptive quantity of treatment a budget per couple would be fairer.
Infertility isn't fair and it sucks and being told it's a life style choice is a kick in the teeth
Fortunately our first private cycle resulted in DS.

This is also a great example of why peoples arguments that infertility is 'natural selection' is complete rubbish. In this instance it would be the school friends children growing up to start to take much needed jobs and those of the close friend wouldn't exist.

This country has a declining birth rate and we will be in need of these children in the workforce later down the line and many of the people complaining here that they are against IVF will directly benefit from the birth of an IVF baby

I know someone who got IVF with a doner egg in her 50s. Husband is the father.
Edit to say, medical procedures carried out in Cyprus, I think.

IVF gets round the issue of dodgy tubes and gets round the issue of bodies not being able to release eggs monthly.

It's a bit like a heart bypass. Gets round the issue.

I don’t think anyone on this thread is advocating that IVF be used by 60 and 70 year olds. Stop sensationalising the issue and try to have some empathy instead. (Something that seems sorely lacking on this thread).

It doesn’t fix the person though. If you fixed the person they could create their own embryo and carry to term.

Your creating a new human outside of the body not fixing the issue.

And “your” pretty dense, aren’t you?

I remember when that Italian women had IVF and had twins at 63. Most on MN thought it was fine because she was very fit and healthy. A few years later she became ill and said herself she was too old.
We obviously need cut offs for IVF, the thorny issue is when.

But that’s my point- the answers aren’t black and white yet some posters have made them so (not all, some have given their opinions sensitively and reasonably) and made those answers in a very unpleasant and I’m quite sure, hurtful fashion. A degree of self-regulation is apparently not necessary for some of the posters on this thread. I feel very sorry for the women they do actually pertain to

Forgot an online forum was my English gcse on a mobile 🥱

It really isn’t. I believe the exact phrase was ‘get over it’.

I'm truly sorry you feel that way, but that man is not your father. He donated genetic material for you to be conceived by someone who wanted a child.
Have you considered counselling to help you process your feelings and discuss what may be a sort of existential crisis?

You don’t mean me do you, because I never said that anyone with infertility should just get over it. As @nothingcomestonothing said I said it is possible to get over it.

I’m so glad it worked for you. I think your funding suggestion is sensible, particularly as more options become available in the future.

This 100%

I don’t believe so. It was some pages ago so I’m not going trawling now! It stuck with me, though, as a very unpleasant comment.

In response to the original question, yes there are still questions to be asked about the ethics of IVF, as there are about every aspect of assisted reproduction. Given the magnitude of what we’re doing in creating life, in a way that was impossible just half a century ago, it would be irresponsible if these weren’t interrogated.

Personally, I know lots of people who have been able to have children as a result of IVF who otherwise wouldn’t, and I’m thrilled for them, and that it’s available. But I’ve always felt that I’d struggle to opt for it myself because I do have qualms about potentially creating embryos which need to be disposed of - in the same way that I don’t think I could choose abortion for myself but am grateful that it’s legal. I also have concerns about women being encouraged, through financial savings on their own treatment, to donate their eggs. If having their own biological children is so paramount, how do they square that with the knowledge that they may have biological children elsewhere who they don’t know? I don’t think I could contemplate that.

Generally though I don’t have an issue with IVF - I’m just breaking it down because the question’s been asked. Surrogacy, on the other hand, I find absolutely morally repugnant for all the reasons others have mentioned.

Your lack of comprehension seems to apply to more than the English language…

“It doesn’t fix the person though. If you fixed the person they could create their own embryo and carry to term.”

You’re also the awful poster who seems to believe that people are infertile “for a reason nature wise”.

Your comments are completely heartless and cruel. I’m quite sure that you wouldn’t voice an opinion like this face-to-face with anyone in the real world. Imagine if it was one of your close friends or family members – would you tell them they are infertile for a reason?

This is one of the worst threads I have ever read on MN. There are so many posts showing zero empathy, a complete lack of respect for facts, cherry picking of sensational stories, and an almost comical level of hypocrisy.

It's really not on to tell someone that how they refer to their biological parent is wrong. The poster is literally correct, that person is her biological father, a biological father is the person who provides the sperm. That's what a biological father is.