Is it your right to have a child?

WYOO this statement:
It is a woman's right to have children, therefore the NHS should fund the total cost of the IVF until the woman is pregnant, irrespective of any children she already has.

I have mixed feelings. I feel sorry for women who can't have babies. However, I think there should be rules around who receives ivf. I read somewhere that really fat women were not allowed ivf.

MrsGoggins wrote:I read somewhere that really fat women were not allowed ivf.

I think this is because IVF is proven to be less successful in very overweight women and so they are not given the option to have it until they have lost some weight as it is a waste of money/resources - and sperm/eggs too I guess?

I don't think the NHS (read: the country as a whole) can afford to fund IVF for people who cannot conceive, but I don't think it should be anywhere near as expensive as it is. So a couple are unable to have a child for themselves, have perhaps gone through YEARS of heartache and heartbreak trying to get pregnant, and they haven't been successful, so as their last resort they have to spend thousands of pounds on a treatment that may (or may not) work??!?! And that they may not ever be able to afford to do again if it DOESN'T work?? It's not good really.

I suppose if I was in the position of not being able to have babies, I would remortgage my house if I had to, lol. If someone is desperate, they do desperate things. A woman at my toddler group had her little girl with ivf. It was her last attempt and she was lucky. She really spoils her little girl, and I understand why.

MrsGoggins wrote:I suppose if I was in the position of not being able to have babies, I would remortgage my house if I had to, lol. If someone is desperate, they do desperate things. A woman at my toddler group had her little girl with ivf. It was her last attempt and she was lucky. She really spoils her little girl, and I understand why.

Oh I totally agree. I would too. What I'm saying is, I don't think people should HAVE to. It's a ridiculous sum of money for something that should be giving hope (and hopefully a baby) to couples who can't conceive, and something that doesn't ALWAYS work.

sunset30 wrote:
I have ds. I was told prior to that that I would NEVER have children. This was devastating, but, sometimes, that's life. I am lucky that I have ds. If I didn't, if we had been unsuccessful at trying for a baby, I would have had to deal with that. I experienced a m/c and we set a limit. We sai we would try got five years, adn then, if unsuccessful, we would stop trying, and work out how to deal with it. I would not have had IVF.

I think you are a very special lady to be able to say that.

I think many women do see it as their "right" to have children. It's not. I know this is mainly a discussion about IVF but there are many ladies out there who don't deserve the children that they have (I'm thinking Baby P's mother right now), simply because they are within their "rights" to have one. I have taught some kids who have yanked so hard at my heartstrings. One lad was never clean. One family scavenged food off the playground. Another lad never saw his mother from one end of the day to the next because she worked three jobs; he wandered around town every night and mostly only had a pound in his pocket for chips. Then there was abuse the other way in that some of the kids in one school were ultra-spoiled, so much so that they truly didn't care about school because their parents would pick up the slack if they didn't do well. So frustrating.

Anyway, my point is that it is a privilege to have children. We are blessed with them. They are our bequest to the future and our only real legacy. I wish more people would realise that when they got pregnant.

this is a hard one because there is so many couple out there who desperately want a baby( who would be good parents)and cant. I dont think that just anyone should have IVF but there does need to be some sort of better regulation who who gets it. Recently there was a story in one of the Scottish newspapers about a drug addict that got IVF I think that this was VERY wrong. that lady got IVF at the expense of potentially good parents not getting it.

This is a tricky one for me as i was told when i was 15 that i would need help to conceive (PCOS). Fortunately i became pregnant with DS when i was 19 naturally.

I do not think that it is a given right that women should be able to have children though. On another post about IVF it was said about mother nature and playing with that. Would this country have serious population problems which would then cause all manner of problems on the other services in this country if there was no limit to the help that is given to people to conceive? Isn't it down to mother nature?

From a maternal point of veiw i am feeling the strain of this. We are TTC atm and i don't know how i will feel if in 2 years time we still have not conceived but i'm not sure i would go to the doctors and demand help to conceive and i definitely don't see us going for IVF at all. I feel that if we don't conceive then it's natures way.

I agree with the general mood on here in that there is no"right" to have a child, more that a child is a "gift".

I agree with IVF as an option but personally don't think that the NHS should fund all of it, It should be means tested and that they pay a % towards the treatment.

At the end of the day while devastating being childless is not life threatening and while we struggle to find the money for important life saving treatments priorities should be given elsewhere.

gift, responsibility, committment, joy, heeartache, worry, tears & lotza love

I sort of said my feelings on this one in the sex selection thread. I feel very differently about this in terms of myself and others. I personally would not ever have IVF.It just doesn't fit at all with my personal belief system, I believe very very strongly in nature getting the final say on this one and if my body didn't want to carry a child I wouldn't want to force it or to put myself through the emotional and financial struggle of several unsuccessful cycles. I'd look into things like overseas adoption or adopting older children first.

As far as other people are concerned, well i can't say i agree with it but at the end of the day they're only hurting themselves. The exception being in the case of women who have for one reason or another waited out their fertile years. In that case whatever they want to do, AI, IVF drinking the milk of wolves, bathing in the blood of virgins should be entirely at their own expense. In this country and this society there is always a choice. If you REALLY want children you COULd have them and you COULD support them. It may mean doing it alone, it may mean no longer living in the manner to which you have become acustomed, it may mean any number of personal sacrifices but the option is there, and the nhs has a limited amount of funds. It seems wrong that people who chose to wait until they would need IVF should get it rather than people who need it through no fault of their own, just as i think a liver transplant should be given to someone who just got sick rather than someone who destroyed their liver with alcohol.

sarabone wrote:As far as other people are concerned, well i can't say i agree with it but at the end of the day they're only hurting themselves. The exception being in the case of women who have for one reason or another waited out their fertile years. In that case whatever they want to do, AI, IVF drinking the milk of wolves, bathing in the blood of virgins should be entirely at their own expense. In this country and this society there is always a choice.

If you REALLY want children you COULd have them and you COULD support them. It may mean doing it alone, it may mean no longer living in the manner to which you have become acustomed, it may mean any number of personal sacrifices but the option is there, and the nhs has a limited amount of funds. It seems wrong that people who chose to wait until they would need IVF should get it rather than people who need it through no fault of their own, just as i think a liver transplant should be given to someone who just got sick rather than someone who destroyed their liver with alcohol.

I mostly replied in the other thread too but just wanted to add this. What about those women who DIDN'T want children during their fertile years because of many other valid reasons including having a career, not having a partner, having a partner who didn't want children?
And just, what exactly, counts as the fertile years? Is it from 16 through to 21, 18 to 30? Each woman is completely different and if they want to have children at a later age, perhaps after entering into a second marriage etc where they want children together and didn't want children in a first marriage, then they should not be prevented simply because of age.

I think every woman who wants to have a child should be able to have one treatment of IVF. If it doesn't work and they want more, then fair enough, lets start looking at alternative funding, but to restrict it on age or who can afford it, is totally wrong.

KoJaq wrote:WYOO this statement:
It is a woman's right to have children, therefore the NHS should fund the total cost of the IVF until the woman is pregnant, irrespective of any children she already has.

Just wondering if this statement was a quotation from somewhere or someone, or just something you wrote for us to get our teeth into? Also, what if the pregnancy finally failed? If you're going to go all out like that, then surely it should be 'until a child is born'.

I disagree with the statement tbh. There should be all sorts of limits, which of course there are. It makes sense to target women on whom it has the best chance of working. Women under 35 who are at or near an appropriate weight for their height. Even they only have a fairly small chance of being successful.

Why *is* that exactly? Anyone know?

I'm not sitting on the fence on this one, more straddling it with one foot firmly on the ground on both sides.

My logical side says I don't think it is any woman's RIGHT to have a child, "irrespective of how many children she already has". Some women shouldn't be parents and having a child is a privilege. I'm not just thinking of the abuse cases. I seriously have issues with, for example, the lady in the States who recently had octuplets via assisted conception when she already has six children.

Having said that, my heart is firmly over on the far side, and for those women who have tried and tried and are unable to conceive or carry a child to term... my heart is with them. I was told I was infertile when I was 23, and we had to explore the whole assisted fertility, IVF and adoption route. Then I fell pg naturally and carried to term. If I hadn't, and had gone down the assisted fertility route, I don't know at what point I would have been strong enough to say "enough".

I quite like the "fees according to means testing" idea, though!

Children are a gift and i dont feel any woman has the right to assume they have the right to become a mother .I feel very much for those who are unable to have children and to long for something you cannot have must be awful, but imo things happen for a reason and i am not too sure how i feel regards messing with what nature intended .