Some controversy has been generated by my post ‘Lottery: the prize, a human egg’. There are those who feel that I am not sympathetic enough with childless couples.http://badthingshappenifgoodpeopledonothing.blogspot.com/2010/03/lottery-prize-human-egg.html My response; I remain opposed to IVF, simultaneously believing that couples deserve better, and may conceive more easily by virtue of ‘ethical methods’.
‘IVF Companies’ Vs. ‘Ethical Methods’
Gravity Gardener left a comment on my post ‘Lottery: the prize, a human egg’. The comment invites us to look at the good works done by ‘IVF Companies’ on behalf of childless couples. Yes, I would agree with Gravity Gardener in the sense that there are ‘IVF Companies’ (‘companies’? doesn’t it make conception sound so corporate?) that act generously, and give couples a ‘freebie’ IVF service.
Hmmm, ‘companies’; is their business manufacturing babies, and unfortunately discarding some ‘products of conception’ that don’t measure up, embryo dumping, and making babies according to ‘profile’ specifics?
What’s the alternative? And do these ‘ethical’ fertility systems work? Perhaps my presence, my identity as a girl conceived in the mid 80s is one small proof.
I have been in the habit of saying (often in public debates) that I was 'a Billings baby', I have modified this comment in accordance with my mother’s wishes and now say ‘Billings guided my conception’. There is this important distinction. While couples who use ‘ethical methods’ feel that the method helps channel their fertility, the method itself is not the raison d’etre for the child, the couples feel they are pregnant with the ‘help’ of the method; the method is not the cause of the pregnancy per se. Conversely, with IVF, most couples think that they have given their bodies to the process, and get an ‘IVF baby’: IVF was responsible for the child’s existence, not the parents really.
The Times (secula’ of secula’ papers) did a holistic report on the success of the most important ‘ethical method’ (NaPro) of our times; ‘the biggest study of NPT effectiveness has come from an Irish trial that monitored more than 1,200 patients. The results, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, were of a live birth rate of 25.5 per cent, a figure that seems impressive given that in the UK the IVF success rate is about 23 per cent.’ For the full story see;
For a very impassioned and Catholic perspective on ‘Ethical methods’ Vs. IVF, see Robert Colquhoun’s blog post;
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