Tag Archives: In Vitro Fertilization

News

Loosening of UK IVF laws causes spike in fatherless children

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Dina sent me this article from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

The number of single women and lesbian couples receiving fertility treatment has soared since the  Government took the controversial decision to remove the legal requirement for any child conceived to have a father or father figure.

In 2007, before the change in the law, only 350 single women had IVF. But by 2010, the last year for available figures, that had leapt 448 per cent to 1,571. The number of lesbian couples given IVF more than doubled in the same period, from 178 to 417. But the number of heterosexual couples treated rose by only 18 per cent.

[…]The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in 2008 removed the requirement for clinics to  take into account a child’s need for a father or male role model before agreeing to treatment. Instead, gay couples or individuals have to prove only that they can provide ‘supportive parenting’.

The legislation also allowed birth certificates to record  two mothers or two fathers for the first time.

One beneficiary is single mother Elizabeth Pearce, who had treatment to have her son Leo, now two. She paid £900 for sperm from an anonymous donor.

Unable to afford IVF after being made redundant from her job as a personal assistant, she cited the European Convention on Human Rights to compel her local NHS trust in Ealing, West London, to pay for her treatment.

Ms Pearce, 40, who now lives in Kent, said: ‘In an ideal world, Leo would have had a dad but that’s not the way things worked out. Single women have as much right to a child as couples.’

Natalie Woods and Betty Knowles, from Brighton, were the first lesbian couple to have a child that listed them both as parents on the birth certificate.

Ms Woods, 40, who had IVF and gave birth to daughter Lily-May in 2010, said: ‘The legal changes have given a clear message that it is OK to parent without a father. What’s important is that there are either one or two big hearts filled with love for your children.’

Keep in mind that IVF is completely taxpayer-funded in the UK. Families where the man works and the wife stays home with the children are forced to subsidize IVF treatments for single women through the UK’s very progressive income tax code.

Just in case anyone needs a refresher, here are some statistics showing the harm that fatherlessness causes little boys and girls. It’s also important to realize that IVF typically results in some number embryos being thrown away because they are not wanted. So not only are there harmful effects on children caused by the fatherlessness, but there may also be the killing of innocent unborn children when discarding unwanted embryos. And if that were not enough, keep in mind that marriage prevents abuse of women and children as well as child poverty, according to the evidence we have.

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How do donor-conceived children cope with not knowing their biological fathers?

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Mary sends me this article from Life Site News. This is a must-read.

Excerpt:

There are only four things Alana Stewart knows about her father: he has blonde hair, blue eyes, a college degree, and his assigned number at the sperm bank where he sold half of Alana’s genetic code is 81.

She is one of an estimated 30,000 – 60,000 children conceived each year in the United States through sperm donation. A former egg donor herself, Alana is now a vocal critic of the practice, which she calls “the violent act of buying and selling a child.”

[…]Many of the children conceived through sperm donation are now adults, and some of them are speaking out against the practice that brought them into existence.

Their stories are revealing that the experience of being a donor conceived child is not what many proponents of the technology expected it would be. Such children were supposed to think of the man married to their mother as their father, and of their biological father as just the man who masturbated at a sperm bank and walked away with a $75 check. But according to Alana, it’s not that simple.

“The biological parent’s absence is impossible to ignore because their presence is impossible to ignore – when you’re living in a version of their body and thinking in a version of their brain,” she told LifeSiteNews. “I do very much feel separated from not only my father, but my entire paternal relatives.”

And more:

My Daddy’s Name is Donor, a report released last year by the Commission on Parenthood’s Future, surveyed young adults conceived through sperm donation and compared their responses to those of peers raised by adopted parents and biological parents.

The study found that 43% of donor offspring compared to 15% of adopted children and 6% who were raised by biological parents agreed with the statement: “I feel confused about who is a member of my family and who is not.”

Moreover, 48% of donor offspring compared to only 19% of adopted children agreed: “When I see friends with their biological fathers and mothers, it makes me feel sad.”

Strikingly, the report also found indications of a correlation between sperm donor conception and marriage failure.

27% of donor children parents are divorced compared to only 14% of parents of adopted children. The number of donor child marriages that fail is only slightly higher than the failure rate of a marriage with biological children – 25%. As the study points out, however, the comparison with adoptive parents is more significant because most couples do not consider fertility technology or adoption until later in life, when marriages tend to be more stable.

For Stewart, the finding is consistent with her own experience.  “Mothers can say things like, ‘Well it’s not your kid anyways.’ The father is left constantly insecure about his place and role in the family,” she said.

She added that turning to sperm or egg donation to conceive a child can be evidence of a “materialistic” attitude on the part of the couple.

“They are people that find it difficult to accept not having something and often put their own needs before others (i.e. their need to have a child before their child’s need to have its father/mother), and these personalities often fail in marriage.”

This is why Christians fight so hard against challenges to the parent-child bond. We oppose depriving children of a relationship with both of their biological parents. We do not want them to feel pain because of the selfishness of adults. When you make marriage fragile with no-fault divorce, or equate traditional marriage to same-sex marriage, you are weakening the standard of every child being born into a stable family where both biological parents are present, and committed to the child over the long-term. That’s the gold standard. And that’s what we should be celebrating and affirming as a society. Sometimes, you can cause harm to the little ones by trying to make the grown-ups feel better about breaking the standard. We have to err on the side of the children.

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News

How health care mandates drive up health care costs

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From Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

The ObamaCare legislation gives the administration the authority to compile a list of female preventive services that all new health insurance plans will have to cover without employing deductibles or charging co-payments. A medical advisory panel is recommending that birth control services should be one of these services.

The committee from the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine that issued the guidelines also suggests that free breast-pump rentals, counseling for domestic violence, annual wellness exams and HIV tests be part of all health insurance plans.

These mandates won’t come without significant costs. The additional benefits won’t be free, despite the left’s loose usage of that word in association with health care. The mandates will force insurance premiums higher and someone will pay.

The Congressional Budget Office said years ago that existing mandates at the state level — there are more than 2,000 of them, according to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance — raise premiums by 15%.

That’s just a starting point. CAHI, which has done heavy work on this issue, believes that state mandates push premiums up by 20%. In some states, the increase can be as high as 50%. The result is a cost curve that bends upward, not down.

Mandates at the state level run from the expected to the bizarre. They require insurers to provide such unorthodox coverage as wigs (hair prostheses), Oriental medicine, port-wine stain elimination, smoking cessation, acupuncture, midwives, counseling, and marriage, occupational and massage therapists.

As we’ve noted before on these pages, the state mandates are an insult to common sense. Why would a single man need an insurance package that covers in vitro fertilization, maternity leave, midwives, breast reduction or mammograms?

Does it make sense for a childless, unmarried woman to be forced into a plan that includes care for a newborn and screening for prostate cancer? And is there any reason a teetotaler’s policy should cover alcohol abuse?

These regulations are not only asinine, they wreck the health insurance marketplace. The longer the list of mandates, the less competition there is. When insurers have to carry these gold-plated packages, they can’t compete with lower-priced plans that have fewer benefits. This can price some customers entirely out of the private market.

Here’s a post from Ruth Blog that makes the financial aspects clearer, using “free” contraception as an example.

Excerpt:

First of all, preventive medicine implies the prevention of a pathological condition. Pregnancy is anything but pathological. Artificial contraception is an elective medical therapy for those desiring to block a totally normal and healthy physical condition. Not only is contraception elective, but the decision to have sex should be elective as well.

Secondly… If an unmarried woman makes the conscious decision to be sexually active, it seems she should also bear the consequences of such a decision. Her partner should be willing to share any burdens of the relationship, including the financial cost of sexual relations. If a woman is not in a stable relationship, it seems unreasonable to demand someone else has to pay for her sexual dalliances.

[…]Sexual activity is elective. Preventing the normal consequence of sexual activity, pregnancy, is elective. The use of artificial contraception to prevent pregnancy is a personal lifestyle choice, not a medically recommended therapy. Therefore, artificial contraception should not be considered mandated preventive medical care. In these tight fiscal times, we cannot afford to be too inclusive with what constitutes preventive medicine.

Note that the artificial conception would be free for women who want to have children without fathers. And we know how that works out.

The Heritage Foundation points out that mandates actually reduce the freedom and prosperity of women who don’t use these services.

Excerpt:

Many Americans find the use of birth control morally objectionable, and some women may simply have no need for a health plan that covers these services, based on any number of personal choices and other factors. Those that fall into this category would have no choice but to pay for unnecessary coverage if the recommendations are made law.

[…]If HHS takes an overly prescriptive approach regarding these particular measures, women who would prefer not to pay the higher premiums to carry health benefits they don’t need or to which they object won’t have that option.

In a truly market-based insurance exchange, women would be able to choose a health plan that met their needs and was consistent with their values, and those who wished to forgo certain benefits would have the freedom to do so. If any attempt at health reform is to succeed at reducing costs and tailoring coverage to the specific needs of each individual, it must ensure that consumers are able to choose the plan and benefits that work best for them, rather than submitting to the decisions of a bureaucratic board.

There is no opt out for moral women when these things are mandated as minimum coverages in every policy. There is no escape. My fear is that women would be forced to pay for these services and then feel obligated to use them since that is the only way to get any value for the money that is being forcibly extracted from them.

What health care mandates really achieve is 1) to buy votes from the providers of the mandated services, and 2) to transfer wealth from people who don’t want or need these elective services (e.g. – single chaste Christian men) to people who need it because of their own elective lifestyle choices. And the more I have to pay to subsidize other people’s breast implants, contraceptives, STI  treatments, abortions and in vitro fertilizations, the less I can afford to do the things that I want to do, which isn’t fair. My money is my money, and their money is their money. I should be allowed to keep what I earn and buy only the health care that I need. I have other uses for that money. Let the government do-gooders find some other way to boost their self-esteem instead of playing Robin Hood with health care.