Is fertility treatment selfish - an interesting response..

I’ve just been reading a really interesting piece written by a mother of twins who expores very honestly the self-consciousness she sometimes feels about her children who were conceived using IUI. She tells how people feel no qualms about asking whether her children were conceived naturally and what an invasion of privacy this can seem.

She also addresses the criticism so often thrown at people who can’t conceive naturally that using fertility treatment is somehow “selfish” and that adopting would be a more socially responsible way to deal with the problem. The wild comments under any story about fertility treatment often imply that couples with fertility problems simply don’t think about this and that we are wound up in some feverish consumerism which makes us believe we have the right to anything we want. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth and couples going through fertility treatment tend to think a lot about their desire for a child and what it means, as this article so clearly explains…

Surrogacy - so easy to condemn...

I've just been reading a piece by Julie Bindel about how selfish it is for couples to opt for surrogacy when there are so many children languishing in care who need adoptive and foster parents. I normally like her writing, but on this occasion she has managed to link people who choose to go to developing countries to find a surrogate mother with anyone else who needs help to get pregnant in one damning line referring to "expensive complicated medical interventions such as IVF and surrogacy".

I recently interviewed two women who'd had a surrogacy arrangement who agreed to speak to me because they wanted to give their response to the endlessly negative press that surrogacy receives. They were friends, and one had decided to help the other to have the child she longed for but couldn't carry (she'd had to have a hysterectomy for medical reasons). There was no exploitation and no money changed hands. They did it twice and it resulted in two children - now teenagers. They are still incredibly close friends and their families spend a lot of time together. Speaking to them was really moving - they were both strong, positive women who were very proud of the children and of what they'd done. The interview was published in the last edition of the Infertility Network UK magazine.

I'm also never entirely convinced by the argument that people are choosing to go to such lengths without considering adoption. Many couples who can't conceive would love to adopt a baby, but their chances of ever being able to do this are extremely slim as the numbers of babies adopted each year in this country are tiny. That's not due to a lack of couples who would jump for joy if they were able to adopt a baby - it's just that decisions about adoption are not often made so early in a child's life and can take years. It's not fair to blame couples who have fertility problems for what may be seen as shortcomings in the adoption process. Many of the children who need adoptive families are much older and have lived through extremely difficult times which can mean that they need experienced carers - and the adoption process is about finding the right adoptive parents for the child, not about making sure that people who might consider surrogacy or fertility treatment are able to adopt instead.

Of course, Julie Bindel is right that the exploitation of poor women in developing countries is utterly wrong and should be condemned - but it's a shame that she has muddied the waters by appearing to conclude that any surrogacy arrangement or even fertility treatment is somehow just as exploitative and wrong.

You can read her piece here

Why don't you just adopt?

I’ve lost count of the number of times I've been asked why couples who are going through the traumas of fertility treatment don’t adopt. It always annoys me as I think there’s a perception that there are huge numbers of small babies languishing in care because people with fertility problems would rather pay for loads of treatment than consider adopting a baby who needs a home. I hope that today’s news that last year just sixty babies were adopted in the whole of England may help explain why adoption isn’t always an option.

Apparently record numbers of children are being taken into care, but that isn’t being translated into more adoptions. It’s particularly sad that so few babies are adopted, as generally the earlier children find new parents, the more successful adoptions can be.

Apparently it can take more than three years for a child to be adopted. The fact that the average age for adoption is just under four would suggest that many of these children could have been found new families at a much earlier age. Next time I’m asked why we don’t all rush off to adopt children when we find we can’t have our own easily, I shall have some figures to quote back at hand…

Is it too easy to buy eggs and sperm in the US?

I've just been reading an interesting piece in the New York Times which compares the complicated process people face when adopting a child with the ease with which donor sperm and eggs can be purchased in the States. During adoption, the interests of the child are always paramount, as they should be, but with donor conception, the interests of the prospective parents may seem to lead the way.

Columnist Ross Douthat discusses a study of donor conceived adults which showed that many of them felt some unease about their conception, often because money had changed hands. Unlike the UK, donation in the States is not only paid but can also be anonymous. Although getting rid of anonymity in the UK was initially seen to have reduced the donor pool and created longer waits for donor treatment, it is likely that in the long run it will reduce the potential problems of donor conception making it possible to trace a donor parent.

You can read the article at www.nytimes.com