The UK Daily Mail reports.

Excerpt: (links removed)

Children born as a result of IVF are a third more likely to get cancer, a major study found.

Scientists said those born after fertility treatments were 33 per cent more likely to have childhood cancer.

They were 65 per cent more likely to develop leukaemia and 88 per cent more likely to develop cancers of the brain and central nervous system.

[…]The research, in the journal Fertility and Sterility, reviewed 25 studies from 12 developed countries, including the US, the UK, Denmark, France and Israel, from 1990 to 2010.

‘The results of the largest meta-analysis on this topic to date indicate an association between fertility treatment and cancer in offspring,’ wrote author Dr Marie Hargreave, of the Danish Cancer Society research centre, Copenhagen.

‘The etiology [origin] of childhood cancer is still largely unknown, but it has been hypothesized that fertility treatment may play a role.’

In addition, IVF often results in abortions because unused embryos are discarded. And even worse, in countries like the UK, IVF is taxpayer-funded. I know that liberal groups in Canada and the U.S. would love to have taxpayer-funded IVF, as well.

Biological Colonialism

There’s also a story about the “colonialism” of IVF by Wesley J. Smith in First Things.

Excerpt: (links removed)

We already know that children born of IVF have poorer health outcomes than those conceived naturally. Yet, in the rush to allow these women to bear children, significant potential safety risks are being ignored.

Indeed, a study published in Science just revealed that three-parent mice and other organisms have significant health problems, including with “individual development, cognitive behavior, and [other] key health parameters.” The Scienceauthors strongly recommend more studies, but go on to suggest that despite safety concerns, families with “offspring that were severely afflicted” by mitochondrial diseases could decide “take the risk” anyway.

The willingness of some to do anything to have a baby has also spurred IVF biological colonialism, by which the fertility industry exploits the gestational capacities of destitute women in developing countries to fulfill the procreative desires of the well-off.

“Outsourcing a Life,” a recent investigative report published by the San Francisco Chronicle into India’s surrogacy industry, revealed the high cost paid by women so poor they are willing to gestate other people’s babies for pay. According to the story:

• Women sign contracts requiring them to abort on demand of the biological parents;
• Women are forced to leave their families for months and live in crowded dormitories with other pregnant surrogates;
• Women are maneuvered into having medically unnecessary caesarean sections. Seventy-five percent of the surrogates in the clinic discussed in the story deliver surgically.
• There may be adverse social consequences for the surrogate, who may become isolated by a disapproving family or culture.

An Indian study revealed other profound wrongs associated with commercial surrogacy—including sex selection, parents refusing to take the child after birth, and surrogates being paid a pittance, with most money going to so-called baby brokers. The report also found that surrogate mothers sometimes “feel attached to the babies even they were not biologically their own children.” Of course they do. Such feelings are a natural biological process associated with gestation. That’s part of biological colonialism’s cruelty.

[…]Indian surrogates have died giving birth to other people’s babies, orphaning their own children.

I found that article very distrurbing. Maybe if people want babies, then they should focus on preparing themselves for marriage EARLIER, finding a marriage-capable man EARLIER, and then having babies the natural way. It would be better for the babies, and cost taxpayers (at least in the UK) a lot less. I don’t understand why people are so selfish. You can’t focus on other things until you are 40 and then wreck everyone else’s life trying to fix your own choices at the last minute. It’s scary to me that people do this.

From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

More than 100 unborn babies were aborted last year by women who were pregnant with twins, triplets or quintuplets but wanted to give birth to fewer children.

With a rise in multiple pregnancies widely attributed to IVF treatment, increasing numbers of women are choosing to terminate one or more foetuses while continuing with their pregnancy to deliver at least one of their babies.

Experts suggest that many of the women opt for abortions because of health concerns, as multiple pregnancies are considered more dangerous to mother and baby.

But some women admitted they were considering the procedure because they did not feel able to cope with more than one baby at a time.

The figures are likely to renew the controversial debate over whether IVF clinics should continue implanting several embryos in order to improve couples’ chances of having a baby.

The Department of Health statistics reveal 59 women aborted at least one foetus while continuing to give birth to another baby in 2006 – the number had risen to 85 by 2010.

During 2010, 101 foetuses were selectively terminated because some mothers aborted one or more unborn babies.

Of the 85 women undergoing selective reductions last year, 51 were reducing a pregnancy from twins to a single baby, up from 30 in 2006.

There were also 20 procedures to reduce triplets to twins and nine terminations to take a pregnancy from triplets to a single child.

Separate figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) show that almost one third of selective abortions carried out in 2009 involved pregnancies that were a result of fertility treatment.

[…]Medical experts said there was a clear link between the rise in the number of selective abortions and the increasing use of IVF.

Under the NHS, up to three rounds of IVF can be obtained at taxpayer expense.