Many children are sacrificed to bring forth a healthy IVF-child

Methuselah’s Daughters

by Marie Meaney, Ph.D.

As an article in the DailyMail recently reported, Women are getting increasingly older before having children. The number of women in

 their 50s having children has doubled 

Over the last 5 years in the U.K.; three children are born to mothers in their 50s every week in England and the number of mothers younger than 25 has plummeted by half since the early 1970s.[1] The trend is widespread in the West. What is the reason for this? The length of academic studies and the time it takes to climb the career ladder makes it difficult for many women to have babies before 35. Generally, they want children, but only as the cherry on the cake after they have achieved what they have worked for so hard. Perhaps it’s not their careers, but simply infertility or the fact that they have not found a spouse that is the reason for their childlessness. In the latter case, the heartache of childlessness is added to the sorrow of loneliness. Either way, women can find themselves suffering tremendously from their barrenness, whether it is self-inflicted or not.

The solution to all of this seems to be IVF, which makes it possible for the barren to become the mother of many (to misapply Scripture here). Single women can become mothers through gamete-donation; they no longer depend on finding Mr. Right. Menopausal women, having put their careers first, can have babies through egg-donation and IVF. There is, it seems, finally an end to all this heartache, and the pictures of Carole Hobson, Britain’s oldest mother, with her twins show a happy, though somewhat elderly woman.

Yet, the happy-ending is not for everyone, and the question is whether a happy end is ever possible with IVF. IVF often does not work out. Despite three attempts per cycle, women only have a 30% chance of bringing a child to term; the older they are, the more difficult it becomes. In most Western countries, there is an age-limit to IVF, but not, for example, in India or Cyprus. Carole Hobson had undergone four failed IVF-attempts in Cyprus and the Ukraine (and probably much sorrow), before having some donor-embryos implanted in Mumbai. IVF-tourism makes it possible for the well-to-do, if they are lucky, to get their long-desired child.

But at what cost? 

Many children are sacrificed to bring forth a healthy IVF-child: 

• children who didn’t meet the norm were discarded; 
• others were frozen for future use and then forgotten; 
• some were miscarried whilst others were aborted, because of real or imagined handicaps or simply because the parents didn’t want twins or triplets. 

If any other medical treatment had such a high death rate, it would be banned.

This makes one wonder at the mentality behind seeking a child at any cost.

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