KJK opposing fertility treatment for gay couples

[SapphosRock]

KJK seems to have an ongoing beef with same sex couples having fertility treatment. Why? How is this benefiting women's rights?

Is is definitely not benefiting lesbian rights.

It also appears to be attracting all the homophobes on Twitter.

Shamoo that is shocking, of course the cause of your miscarriages should be diagnosed exactly the same as any other woman. I’m really sorry to hear you were treated like that when going through such a horrendous time.

But two women can’t conceive as a couple because they both produce the same ‘half’ of the necessary starting material. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with either of them, it’s just ….biology.

A woman needs a man, specifically his sperm, to produce a child.

A child a product of a man and a woman.

Two women obviously cannot create a child!

That's just simply a biological fact!

Thanks @Somanyquestionstoaskaboutthis, I really appreciate that.

There are tons of us out there, who don’t or didn’t qualify. It just is.

I wasn’t able to access fertility treatment on the NHS. Effectively I should have been able to get it as NI was getting paid to the UK from dh’s salary and had been for years both whilst living in the UK and within Europe. I was within the usual age range for NHS assistance and were both childless. But as we were living in (as was) another EU country, I / we didn’t qualify. As the NI was getting paid in the UK, we also didn’t quality in our country of residence either. Bloody annoying, especially as we could have got all the rounds almost for free where we were residing as the rules are a lot more generous.

It is hard. However, I don’t think it should be made a women’s rights issue due to be the corresponding men’s rights issue as already mentioned. If donating eggs ever becomes a prerequisite to NHS help, I would rather have remained childless than give up my genetic material. I couldn’t bear to think there’d be part of me living out there somewhere with parents unknown and especially had my ivf failed.

I am sorry for your losses @Shamoo

As I clearly said very quickly in the follow up post, I was referring to treatment through the NHS or a UK fertility clinic

I was responding to the first post not the follow up which I have since read.

My point is that it is possible to be both. Those who say lesbians shouldn’t get free IVF because they don’t have fertility issues: should I have been allowed it after my third miscarriage (given that is when they often say there is a fertility issue for straight women who can very pregnant)? Or am I never allowed it?

Absolutely you can be both. You should be treated just like any one else would be for a medical condition. You should of course never excluded from treatment because of your sexual orientation.

referring me to other parts of this site that I have spent plenty of time on like suddenly they are going to make me agree with you is condescending and patronising.

I was referring to it generally as a place everyone here can learn more should the be interested. Many do not know that board - and the surrogacy board - exist. Nothing I have posted here is to make me anyone agree with me.

But clearly a U.S. Study run by the Catholic Church is not the best source of data, not least because of how different the regulatory framework is in the UK.

The numbers provide broad data and the relevance is the genealogical bewilderment point re ID release. There are other studies, but I don't reject studies due to their source, I would reject them due to the robustness of the data. Had the study found the opposite results would you reject it?

Donor conceived children do sometimes suffer as a result of their type of conception and to dismiss that entirely is drawing a conclusion based on a opinion already formed.

@Mummyoflittledragon what infuriating bureaucracy for you - that’s crazy!

I am talking about gay equality. If you support lesbians having equal rights then you would support the NHS treating them the same as heterosexual couples.

But how can you make this a gay equality argument regarding female homosexual couples without also extending that ‘equality’ to male homosexual couples?

I don‘t believe anyone has a right to a child.

and the blunt implication in your messages that donor children will be fucked up purely because they are donor children is both offensive and inaccurate.

Maybe 'fucked up' is too strong, but there is definitely evidence that donor conceived children face emotional struggles due to not knowing half of their biological identity.

while straight couples are routinely offered it for free

You are mistaken. There are a lot of criteria to be met. It is by no means routine. Certainly not if you already have a child.

I don‘t believe anyone has a right to a child.

I think I agree with this. Our world is overpopulated as it is and the NHS is struggling to keep the current population of the UK as healthy as possible

Or are over 39 or have a bmi of over 25…

I know. The people at the clinic were lovely. They gave us the first round of the most expensive drugs for free as they were near their sell by date - the ovary stimulation drugs or whatever they’re called. At the time this saved us a little over 1k. These were the first line drugs used for the first round of ivf. We just got lucky that there was a box available and the woman at the clinic said they do this as standard to help out people in our situation. Didn’t work though and we paid for everything else and the next rounds etc.

I don’t doubt some donor conceived children struggle due to it, I haven’t said that they dont. Like I said in my original reply on this topic, there are all sorts of ways we - as parents - can fuck up our kids. There are all sorts of ways to have donor children, from regulated ID release, to regulated anonymous (outside the UK), to random bloke from the back of a magazine, to random bloke in a nightclub. I’m sure the journey for all of those children would be / will be different. I’m sure donor children are also impacted by when they are told, how they are told, what they are told and much more.

The first person who raised the topic did so off the back of a clear (and false) implication that the NHS provides support for anonymous donor babies, and then that children who can’t access their donor details until 18 will be fucked up by it. That is what I was pushing back on.

Maybe you and I are not actually that far apart in our views on this.

For what it’s worth, I would largely discount the relevance of any USA study for UK regulated purposes unless all of the children in the study were ID release. Maybe that exists as a study, I don’t know.

KJK seems to have an ongoing beef with same sex couples having fertility treatment. Why? How is this benefiting women's rights?

What about the resulting childrens' rights? Aren't they almost more important?

You mean donor children who don’t know half their biological identity right? Because there are plenty of donor children who do.

I don‘t believe anyone has a right to a child.

This is my fundamental belief too. If a person has a fertility problem which can be fixed by medical treatment then they should get the treatment. I don't believe in donor conception at all though, and certainly not surrogacy (even altruistic).

There are plenty of children who grow up in less than favourable circumstances, and there are definitely too many children who don't know their (dead-beat) dads. Their existence doesn't make it morally right to deliberately create more children who don't know one of their biological parents. IMO, the "ID release at 18" is a bit of a cop out. It is recognising the importance of an adult person knowing their biological history, but not recognising that children need that too.

In the same way, the fact that it is sometimes necessary to remove a newborn from its mother for safeguarding reasons doesn't justify deliberately creating a new baby with the intention of removing it from its mother (surrogacy).

Full disclosure: I'm single and have no children (deliberately) so I don't really have any skin in this game.

I believe unexplained infertility is funded yes

A same sex couple do not have unexplained infertility.

The first person who raised the topic did so off the back of a clear (and false) implication that the NHS provides support for anonymous donor babies, and then that children who can’t access their donor details until 18 will be fucked up by it. That is what I was pushing back on.

This is a gross and disingenuous misrepresentation of what I actually said 🤷‍♀️

Maybe you and I are not actually that far apart in our views on this.

I suspect so - I do appreciate that the cost of personally funding IVF is a cost that couples naturally getting pregnant do not have to bear and I have no experience of miscarriage so can only attempt to imagine what that feels like once, let alone numerous times.

You and I both understand that children who do not know where they come from , or fully where they come from (bereavement, single parent families, adoption, surrogacy and donor conception) may suffer in various ways. They may not.

I will re-read your posts to be sure I haven't misunderstood (I probably have so I apologise in advance) but as other studies/case studies and articles have concluded there is no impact at all (Susan Golumbok, some pro-surrogacy and pro-donor conception), I do question this idea when I see it as I don't think it's representative.

I also think it's likely that the full implication of donor conceived children may not be understood by them themselves until if/when they become parents, and depending on the method used.

I think it's fraught with ethical concerns we do not yet understand, or are only beginning to understand, as enough time has passed. In the U.K. donor conceived children of ID release donors are turning 18 this year.

Sharing for the thread as I'm sure you know this already @Shamoo

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/03/children-donor-conceived-origins-sperm-egg-donations

IMO, the "ID release at 18" is a bit of a cop out. It is recognising the importance of an adult person knowing their biological history, but not recognising that children need that too.

Cheap DNA tech and 23 and me type websites will render anon/non anon gamer donations obsolete anyway.

I realise that probably wasn’t anticipated when the law change in 2005 though!

Yes, if it's a fertility problem. But if it's a matter of sperm donation because both partners are female (and thus do not produce small gametes) I am not sure they should get that on the NHS because neither of them is infertile. I think this may be KJK's point. As to gay men and surrogates, that I abhor; it's using women as a port-a-womb, a thing. She will be the mother of their child and she is ignored. Adopt, that's fine.

OP I think your screencap, by including the tweeter above, makes it look like KJK is replying, I think you should make it explicit she has been quote-tweeted.

Having said that, she is absolutely right. Men and women who are not infertile don’t have ‘fertility issues’. The appropriation of the language around infertility and also abortion -‘reproductive rights’ by same sex couples is obviously paving the way for surrogacy and unnecessary IVF on the NHS.

Well… I agree.

Just because you’ve decided half of the child’s genetic material and family background doesn’t matter to you, it doesn’t mean it won’t matter to them.

It’s also interesting that such couples go for donor gametes over adoption because they ‘want that biological connection’ yet biological connections no longer matter when it comes to the kid knowing their heritage and ‘love is all you need’.

🤷🏼‍♀️

If we fund infertility IVF we also need to fund that used for donor conception other wise we are being discriminatory. Whether any IVF should be funded is another debate. As for paid surrogacy I think that one should go to a referendum, ideally referendum should be used more frequently for contentious issue even if done online only