Abortion after IVF

So, "dozens" of young women are apparently having abortions after getting pregnant by IVF because they have "changed their minds". The report that eighty women who'd had IVF went on to have abortions was said to show that infertile couples were treating babies as "commodities" and it brought out the anti-IVF brigade in force. It's such a terrible shame that something affecting a tiny number of the couples who have IVF every year has been allowed to taint the arguments about whether fertility treatment should be funded by the NHS.

The reality is that the number of women who went on to have abortions after IVF is less than one per cent of the total number of IVF pregnancies. The fact that one woman had told a newspaper reporter that she had been pushed into IVF by her partner, and changed her mind once she got pregnant has been assumed to apply to the other 79 women who didn't continue with their pregnancies. We have no idea what motivated them, but there is no evidence that it wasn't problems with the baby's or their own health, a relationship breakdown or even the death of a partner.

IVF is not something that anyone undertakes lightly - it involves huge emotional and usually financial commitment and is often a pretty traumatic process. The vast majority of those going through treatment would do anything they could to have a child, and using the example of one woman in order to make assumptions and draw conclusions about the three and a half million people having difficulty conceiving is both wrong and unfair.