Tag Archives: In Vitro Fertilization

Commentary

Wesley J. Smith’s top 10 issues in bioethics

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Wesley J. Smith blogs at Secondhand Smoke, but he also works for the Discovery Institute. And he’s written a post about the top 10 issues in bioethics.

Here are the top 10 recent bioethics stories:

  1. The ascendance of an anti-human environmentalism.
  2. The growth of biological colonialism.
  3. The increase in American pro-life attitudes.
  4. The struggle over Obamacare.
  5. Legalization of assisted suicide in Washington.
  6. The success of adult-stem-cell research.
  7. “Suicide tourism” in Switzerland.
  8. In vitro fertilization (IVF) anarchy.
  9. The Bush embryonic-stem-cell funding policy.
  10. The dehydration of Terri Schiavo.

Do you know what “suicide tourism” is?

Here’s what it is:

Over the last decade, Switzerland became Jack Kevorkian as a country, its suicide clinics catering to an increasingly international clientele — mostly from the United Kingdom — with the victims ranging from the terminally ill, to people with disabilities, to even a double suicide of a terminally ill elderly woman and her frail husband, who wanted to die rather than be cared for by others. Alas, as was the case with Kevorkian in the 1990s, audacity was rewarded. In the face of a wave of high-profile suicide-tourism stories, England’s head prosecutor published guidelines that, in essence, decriminalized family and friends’ assisting the suicides of the dying, disabled, and infirm. Others mimicked the Swiss. In the U.S., the Final Exit Network appears to have created mobile suicide clinics, leading to the indictment of several of its organizers. Meanwhile, the Australian “Dr. Death,” Philip Nitschke, traveled the world holding how-to-commit-suicide clinics. Still, as the decade came to a close, there was a sense that the tide could be turning: The Swiss government appears poised to shut down the suicide-tourism industry, perhaps even — although this is less likely — outlawing assisted suicide altogether.

Actually, the UK is considering cashing in on suicide tourism, as well.

Podcasts

Jennifer Roback Morse podcasts on declining males and the overpopulation myth

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From the Ruth Institute podcast page.

More women marrying down as men’s education and salaries decline

The MP3 file is here. (from 1/22/2010)

Topics:

  • women are “marrying down” educationally and financially
  • what do women typically want out of husbands and marriage?
  • are women happier bring the primary breadwinners?
  • has the feminist agenda driven men out of the university?
  • should there be complementarity or equality in the home?
  • men mature more slowly so they are less ready to marry
  • is it sensible for men to stay at home and for women work?

My previous post on this topic is here: How feminism’s war against men ends up hurting women.

The myth of overpopulation and what it means to you

The MP3 file is here. (from 1/22/2010)

Topics:

  • how the transition from country to city discourages child-bearing
  • how religion impacts how many children parents have
  • what is the US birth rate, is it high enough?
  • can we just import immigrants to alleviate the low birth rate?
  • has increased prosperity encouraged people to have more children?
  • how has the purpose of sex changed after the sexual revolution?
  • how does the demographic crisis threaten entitlement programs?
  • what do we learn from the declining birth rate in Japan?
  • how does population growth impact stock market performance?

Dr. J’s wonderful blog is here.  Please give it a visit! She has really been writing a lot of her own thoughts into her posts lately. It’s very fun and engaging!

News

Are elderly women who have babies through IVF being selfish?

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The lovely Betsy of Ruthblog linked to this old 2009 article from BioEdge.

Excerpt:

The record for Britain’s oldest women to give birth will be broken next month by 66 year old Elizabeth Munro, from Cambridge. It is thought that Ms Munro, who is single and a successful business woman, travelled to the Ukraine to become pregnant using donor eggs and IVF treatment.
In the UK, health trusts determine which women will be eligible for IVF treatment on the National Health Service (NHS), and factors limiting availability include the age of the woman. Not many trusts will consider providing NHS treatment for women over about 39 years old. However, some private clinics, which are not obliged to follow NHS guidelines, will offer treatment to women up to the age of 50, although it is rare for them to consider treating women older than this.

[…]Ms Munro, who is due to give birth next month by Caesarean section, claims she still feels 39 and is fitter than many women a third her age. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, she said: ‘It’s not my physical age that’s important – it’s how I feel inside.’ She added: ‘I don’t have to defend what I have done. It’s between me, my baby and no-one else’.

The Telegraph article says this:

The childless divorcee travelled to the Ukraine for IVF treatment and is planning to give birth at a clinic in Cambridge in the next month.

She will be nearing 80 when the child becomes a teenager.

I also note that IVF is covered for women under 40 by the state-run National Health Service, (as are breast implants), just like in Canada. Another reason that Christians should oppose socialized medicine.

Betsy makes this snarky comment:

Yet another example of how selfish people can be. So much for what’s best for the child. I want it, and I can get it, so I will. And of course the doctors aren’t willing to turn down a buck. So sad. Poor kids with moms who will likely die while the kids are in college. How kind. I’m willing to bet old women are doing this because their grown children are too selfish to provide grandchildren. And what 20-year-old wants to spend his time caring for his mom after her hip replacement surgery or while she’s dealing with dementia?

I note that Ms. Munro is divorced, so her child will be raised without a father in the home. I just think that when people begin a new realtionship with a living thing, that they should count the cost of the relationship and make sure that they can set aside the time, money and effort required to take care of that other person/animal/whatever. It’s no good to treat children like property, and no good to treat husbands like property either.

Something even worse

Anyway, here is a newer UK Daily Mail article that is even worse.

Excerpt:

Cradling her twin boys in her arms, the world’s oldest mother confidently proclaimed that longevity ran in her family.

But just two and half years on, Maria Carmen del Bousada’s boasts have been proved sadly wrong.

The 69-year-old, who admitted lying about her age to receive fertility treatment in the U.S, has died from cancer.

[…]Orphaned before reaching school, her sons, Christian and Pau, will have to rely on others to find out about her.

[…]Earlier this month, Britain’s oldest mother Elizabeth Adeney, who had a boy in May, was 67. Like Miss Bousada, she too was childless and single when she underwent fertility treatment using a donor egg and donor sperm.As for Miss Bousada’s cancer, it is understood that the former shop worker had been told that the drugs used during her fertility treatment may have hastened the advance of the disease.

[…]It is known that some types of cancer are sensitive to hormones associated with both pregnancy and fertility treatment. Miss Bousada told doctors in Los Angeles that she was 55 when she travelled there to undergo IVF treatment.

Critics, including her own family, called the pensioner, who went through the menopause 18 years before her £20,000 treatment, ‘selfish and irresponsible’.

After the birth she admitted lying about her age and predicted she would live to 101 as her mother had done.

‘I have every reason to believe longevity runs in my family,’ she said.

Please take a look at the related post below on how children are affected by single motherhood, because there is an interesting debate with a single mother in the comments, and you can see how they think.

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