Her Daily News

Fertility treatments are definitely a hot topic recently. An article released recently on Salon.com’s Boadsheet caught my eye when discussing what these kinds of treatments mean for women in our society. Both of the women in the article gave birth to sextuplets with the help of fertility treatments only 10 hours apart. So what’s the big deal? Well, its the classic battle of nature vs. science.

Sextuplet births are quite rare (never mind two in a row) — the chance of conceiving six “naturally” is one in nearly 5 billion — but predictions are that the incidence of all high-order multiples (triplets and beyond) will only increase with the use of fertility treatments. Unless, that is, as Washington University pediatrics professor F. Sessions Cole suggested to CNN, doctors figure out how to reduce that risk. Large numbers of multiple (even twin) pregnancies are no joke or adorable circus act. Neither the uterus nor the average family income/wherewithal was designed for more than one baby at once. For this reason, physicians often advise “selective reduction” as a means of increasing the odds for the remaining proto-siblings and protecting the health of the mother. But even with so much at stake, that’s hardly an easy route to take, especially for a couple who have had trouble conceiving in the first place.

The article goes on to discuss how often times it is actually fertility drugs (and not procedures such as IVF as most commonly thought) that cause higher rates of multiple births. But these drugs are also less expensive making them more likely to be used as opposed to costly procedures like IVF.

A special report I found on MSNBC along the same lines gives readers a detailed overview the lengths some women are going to to conceive children. One article in particular talks about women who are seeking reproductive assistance outside of the U.S. It is only reasonable to magine we will see a rise in these types of procedures as many foreign countries don’t have such stringent requirements for fertility treatments. That includes allowing women over 40 to have such treatments.

I foresee a few moral dilemmas ahead. In the first article, a procedure called “selective reduction” is discussed. This is basically the parents option to abort a certain number of the babies they have conceived. This type of abortion is rarely discussed. Would this type of abortion still be legal if other types weren’t? The article also discusses how one of the mothers of sextuplets is recovering from heart failure because of the strain the pregnancy took on her body. When prescribing these fertility drugs that, as it was so eloquently stated, turn you into “an ovulation machine”, aren’t we putting these women at risk of such health problems knowing that the possibility of multiples is so high?

Finally, the news has seen a number of women over 40 give birth in recent years thanks to these types of treatments. As I stated earlier, this is more common in foreign countries. In some ways, we have to question whether or not this is the right to bring these children into the world. Granted people are living longer these days, what are the odds that a mother giving birth at the age of 60 will live so see their children’s 20th or even 10th birthdays?

While fertility treatments bring hope to millions of couples, is it possible that playing God of sorts might come back to bite us in the ass one day? Please feel free to share your thoughts.

women, fertility, reproduction, health, abortion