Single people who want children will be classed as infertile.

[quencher]

This is a guideline according to the WHO. They say it's a right for everyone to have access and should be treated and classed in the same category of those who are infertile because of medical issues.
I don't think the NHS can coupe with this. I also, don't think that not having a partner makes you infertile.

Please help me see where the WHO is coming from and why they have come to this conclusion.

It does not suggest 'free at the point of want'

The trouble with that statement is that it could just as easily be applied (and I've heard some do it) to medical infertility. Having children is a want, not a need, and there are plenty of people who advocate the NHS get out of the field of fertility treatment as it's 'not necessary'.

Disclaimer: I fully support provision of IVF and other fertility treatment on the NHS - just pointing out that once you start getting into 'the NHS is only for need' it's a slippery slope.

no moral judgement should prevent access to IVF

Why not - it applies to adoption?

I'm single, I want a child and I definitely do not think I should be classed as infertile.

I have paid for four rounds of IUI this year trying to get pregnant. I do not resent the NHS for not funding treatment for me. We need to look after our NHS to make sure it can cope with the health needs of the population. My wanting a child is not a health need in my eyes.

I am grateful that once I am pregnant I can be looked after by the NHS just like any other pregnant woman in the UK. I had a miscarriage earlier this year and the service I received from my local NHS hospital was first class. I'm pregnant again now and I am lucky to be under the care of an NHS obstetrician.

Fertility treatment is expensive. I do not want the NHS bearing the cost of helping single women become pregnant (apart from exceptional circumstances like if a woman has her eggs frozen prior to chemo; in cases like that I do think it's appropriate for the NHS to harvest, store the eggs and then do IVF at a later date).

I find this kind of reclassification problematic.

Infertility means somrthing very different from "would like a baby but currently have no partner".

The fact that both might lead to childlessness (for completely different reasons) does not mean they are the same.

The word "people" here is massively problematic.

The idea that a single man who wants children but can't have them because he has no womb with which to gestate them could be classified as "infertile" just the same as men or women with medical issues strikes me as potentially dangerous.

Nobody has a right to somebody else's womb, no matter how sad they are about not having a baby.

Even if the NHS were forced to provide artificial insemination (and I'm not sure that they would be), I don't think they are necessarily obliged to make that service widely available or desirable - look at NHS dental care. There could be a 20 year wait for a clinic in the Outer Hebrides with no choice of sperm donor.

However, while I'm not particularly worried about the NHS, I am worried about the appropriation of the word 'infertile', if that is what has been done here.

With adoption social workers look at what is best for the child. For example in an ideal world it helps if the adoptive parents are a similar ethnic background so it doesn't shout out to the world that the child is adopted. Children who have been adopted might have issues so it's important to pick parents who can cope.

With normal pregnancy there is no screening for suitablity as parents. Babies are only removed from parents at birth if there are glaring issues like drugs that can't be ignored. I think it would be reasonable to refuse fertility treatment to under 18s or people addicted to drugs. Sexual orientation or martial status is not a reason on its own for refusing assistance with conceiving a baby.

Hetrosexual marriage is a social construct. Plenty of children thrieve in family that does not follow the traditional nuclear family model. Many planned single mothers or lesbian couples are better prepared than lots of heterosexual people.

I have lovely lesbian couple as tenants. They want a child. I hope that they achieve their dreams one day.

Is anyone ever ready to be a parent? I got pregnant at 25. I wasn't married. I did have a job and somewhere to live. It wasn't planned, but I coped. I had to grow up over night.

If we put up too many barriers to single women or lesbians who want help getting pregnant then we risk being hypocrites.

The outcome is the same. People who want to have a baby, but cannot have one.

No it's not. One couple cannot have a baby without medical assistance. The other one probably can have a baby but doesn't want to do it via the options which are available to her.

It's not the NHS's duty to sort out your single friend's social problems. It's a health service and treats health problems.

Yes, it's sad if things go wrong in relationships and life choices don't work out. But it's not the responsibility of the health service or the taxpayer to sort that out.

Would you describe a lesbian couple as 'having social problems', Bill?

What options are available to her, out of interest, that don't involve medical intervention? Entrapping a man she doesn't really like and who doesn't want a child into unwitting fatherhood?

Organising access to safe sperm for women who want a sperm donor is far cheaper than treating someone for aids. Believe it or not lesbians and single women pay tax like the rest of us. A well run sperm/ ova bank with recieptants making a donation doesn't hurt the rest of us.

Actually, I wonder exactly how unempathetic I would sound if I said 'Yes, it's sad if a couple can't conceive and life choices such as waiting until mid-30s before trying for a baby don't work out. But it's not the responsibility of the health service or the taxpayer to sort that out.'

I think I'd categorise myself as a total shit in that circumstance, to be frank.

It's a slippery old slope, the idea that one set of people who can't get pregnant without medical help are 'worthy' and another set (whose interventions are likely by their nature to be cheaper and less complex in the first instance) are not. Because the line of who deserves help and how much they deserve is liable to shift over time until you have a narrative of 'it's sad, but it's not the taxpayer's responsibility to pay for someone's desire to have children.' Full stop. Particularly given the existing narrative around fertility treatment on the NHS.

Unintended consequences. Worth being aware of them.

Infertility is a medical problem.

Not having a partner is not a medical problem.

Redefining infertility to include people who are single will hurt the medically infertile.

Words mean things.

Being unable to have a child because of medical problems is not the same thing as being unsble to have one for a lack of gametes (or a the lack of a woman to carry the foetus).

We don't allow choices that might affect health outcomes to deny people access to medical care.

That does not mean a medical system becomes the corrective for all problems, medical or not.

Redefining infertility to include people who are single will hurt the medically infertile.

I can see that point of view but I can also see the other - a narrative that consciously and explicitly determines fertility treatments to only be available for some is very option to constant chipping away at who the 'some' are.

Fertility treatment should be available to people who are medically infertile.

A single woman or a lesbian isn't febatred from.seeking that treatment, should she be infertile.

But defining a person's lack of partner as constituting infertility is effectively defining infertility out of existence.

It is not right to do that when infertility is already so overlooked and misunderstood.

I was referring to that particular set of circumstances rather than all circumstances and, no, I wouldn't describe lesbians as having 'social problems' but I would say that the inability of two reproductively healthy gay women to conceive a child is a social problem rather than a medical one. And I understand from the clinic I was treated at that gay women already essentially receive NHS treatment available in their area on request because they only have to say they have had six goes at insemination which hasn't worked, but it isn't policed or checked in exactly the same way clinics wouldn't insist on going into a heterosexual couples bedroom to check they were actually having sex.

I know that people think they're being lovely land cuddly and fluffy and 'nice' saying 'Oh well if somebody wants a baby then just give them one.' But how exactly do you think this is going to work? If we introduce state funded off the shelf parenthood on demand for all women where exactly do you think all the sperm is going to come from? There is a shortage of sperm anyway just for heterosexual and gay female couples. Men aren't just going to give up their sperm on demand just so they can be cut out of the parenting equation.

And there simply isn't the funding available to help reproductively healthy single people have children. Fertility treatment is rationed enough as it without this. What do you want to cut? Diabetes services? Stop treating broken limbs? Cut a few more cancer drugs?

The reality is that if 'equality' of access is granted to single people it would mean that the service would stop for everyone as it just wouldn't be viable. And that would mean that people with medical infertility would have no hope of having children would have no chance ever of having children whilst most of the single people would still have options to conceive and would probably take them (as they always have done).

It's an incredibly creepy idea anyway, the state medicalising and facilitating conception and it being reduced to men wanking into a cup and women being inseminated. Having had IUI, IVF and other fertility drugs they idea of women undergoing unnecessary medical treatment just for social reasons is pretty repellent too. It would also cause massive knock on social problems with lots of very poor children in one income households created and the prospect of many, many more children in care if they only have one parent and half a family should anything happen.

And from my own point of view, I've been through a decade of infertility, years of invasive tests, strong drugs, dye injected in my Fallopian tubes, hormones injected in my stomach twice daily, horrendous side effects, infection, illness, heartbreak every month and more hands up my minge than I could ever remember to have my children (and expense for 2&3). I think when you've been through that you really can't see someone just decided at 39 that actually they'd quite like a baby and expecting the NHS to sort it out in quite such a compassionate way.

It's not an easy option and it's not the 'pop in at lunchtime and get pregnant' option a lot of people seem to think it is.

Aside from gay couples most people having it have quite severe medical challenges, and go through an awful lot to have their children. I really don't think that can be compared to someone who's had 25 fertile years and never chosen to prioritise children wanting the state to sort that out for them.

I really don't think that can be compared to someone who's had 25 fertile years and never chosen to prioritise children wanting the state to sort that out for them.

Honestly, I get that you've had a horrific time, and I'm incredibly sorry about what you've gone through.

But that is such a reductive and insulting way to categorise others who may need medical intervention to become pregnant without being medically infertile that I don't think there is much to discuss here. You're basically saying a woman should be willing to stay in a DV situation if she wants kids, that she should be willing to lie to a man about her contraception to get pregnant without his agreement, that she should enter into a loveless relationship simply to achieve pregnancy, that all women should try to get pregnant at the first available opportunity in case things go wrong later.

I don't care what it's called. I think there's a good case for two different categories, and for increased clarity and mandation about the provision of treatment on an evidence basis, e.g. at least 3-4 rounds of IVF funded regardless of what area you live.

But on an outcomes level, saying that one woman deserves the heartbreak of being involuntarily childless more than another based on the reasons for that situation (the logical basis for taking an all/nothing approach to state-supported treatment) isn't something I can understand or support.

On that basis, I'm out of this conversation.

"I really don't think that can be compared to someone who's had 25 fertile years and never chosen to prioritise children wanting the state to sort that out for them."

They may have paid tax for almost 20 years. They paid for the health care of plenty of other people. Often women who have their children late have high flying careers. They are the work horses of the U.K. Ecomony.

I had maternity care in my twenties for an unplanned baby when I had only been working for four years. I got pregnant very easily before I had has much chance to pay into the system. Is it right that I got maternity care?

Billsykes - Often; it's not both partners in a couple who are medically infertile but one isn't it?. Not always but it's certainly very common.

Following your train of thought that infertility is solely a medical issue and that single people, gay couples or couples who have 'left it too late' shouldn't be assisted because they're not medically infertile - a partner of someone who is fertile but in a relationship with someone who isn't should just go and find a partner who is equally as fertile and have a baby with them? . Is that a 'social problem' in your view?. They could have a baby but just not with the person they're in a relationship with. They're not medically infertile. Or is it different when it's a single person or a gay couple?.

Why is everyone saying they'ld get IVF?, surely a single person without medical infertility would get (much cheaper) IUI not IVF??

No. And that's a complete straw man argument. Medical infertility is entirely random and you bear no responsibility for it.

By the time you reach the age of 39 the place you find yourself in is the result of a series of adult decisions for which you are responsible. Of course I'm not suggesting women stay in DV situations. But over the course of 25 years a reproductively healthy woman will have had around a third of her life to get herself into a position where she can reproduce and if she hasn't done it's really not the responsibility of the state to solve that. And yes, that might reasonably mean settling or marrying someone you're not having a grand romance with because you want to settle down and have a family. That's what an awful lot of people do. And yes, you can probably trot out a few extreme cases like someone locked in a cellar for 25 years by an abusive boyfriend but in the overwhelming majority of cases women are in that position because of the choices they've made and for which they are responsible. Some of them might be very sad, but who's going to be the moral arbiter of which single women are deserving or not?

The reality of the situation is there would be a finite amount of sperm. Do you really think a couple with a genuine medical problem should be put on a level with Janet whose boyfriend always said he didn't want children but she stayed with him for 15 years because she thought he'd change? Or Sophie whose married boyfriend always promised he'd leave his wife and they'd start a family but he never did? Or Marie who's always been into clubbing and short term relationships but has suddenly heard her ticking clock? Who's going to tell a couple who are infertile because of childhood mumps that there's no sperm left for them because it's gone to Jane who can't keep a relationship going because she's controlling and has poor personal hygiene?

By the time you get to 40 although you might not want to be childless it's not truly a completely involuntary state because you've got there as a result of the choices you've made.

The NHS isn't there to sort out people's poor life choices or relationship woes.

And you haven't answered the most important question? Where do you expect all the sperm to come from? Put out a general announcement saying 'Sorry lads, we don't need you or want you any more and we don't want you to be fathers to your children but if you could just come over here and wank into a cup and give us your genetic material so we can have what we want and babies you'll never see or be involved with or cuddle or teach to ride a bike, or kiss goodnight - well that will be just dandy'.

There are limited resources, particularly sperm and they must be directed to those with a medical need through no fault of their own and not to help sentient adults who just don't want to accept responsibility for their own life choices.

Anyway, it's a bit of a moot point, because there is no way in hell any government would set up an insemination programme for healthy women or would even be able to; because if you think men are just going to start handing over their sperm willynilly just because a woman has decided that there are none of them that she really fancies shacking up with then you're living in cloud cuckoo land.

I'm talking about NHS funding and no, I don't think that single people without medical issues should be treated because they don't need treating.

Couple's who've 'left it too late' aren't funded because NHS IVF cuts off at 42.

Gay women I don't really have a problem with them receiving treatment because being gay is as involuntary as being infertile for medical reasons, rather than being something that you bear some responsibility for.

Using the logic you've applied there, IVF should only be available to women who started trying to conceive before the age of 33. After all, not ok if they've wasted all that potentially fertile time, they should be willing to bear the consequences.

Do you honestly think this is going to be such a wildly popular option? Sperm banks exist now, with very little promotion at all. I know three lovely kids who are the result, but maybe their mums should have made better choices and shacked up with a bloke with plenty of functional sperm when their husbands turned out to be infertile.

Speaking of straw men, yours are ludicrous.

Once you start making moral judgements about who should and shouldn't get NHS treatment you are on shaky ethical grounds indeed. Smoked all your life and now have cancer? No chemo for you, The non-smokers made better life choices (objectively much better than 'didn't get knocked up while not in a stable relationship') deserve the funding more than you.

Really out now. This is just disgusting stuff.

There is no such thing as an infertile couple either. Only one of them in the couple is infertile

If the single person can be told to go and find a partner the fertile partner trying for a baby with an infertile person could be told to find someone who can have children.....

By the time you get to 40 although you might not want to be childless it's not truly a completely involuntary state because you've got there as a result of the choices you've made.

Oh really?

I caught my long term partner cheating on me on my mid thirties when we had plannex to marry and start a family.

Just exactly what was i supposed to do? Beg him not to? Tolerate it? Trap him by lying about the pill?

Beg the next man whom I dated to take me and give me children or the next?