In defense of IVF and fertility treatments

Sometimes when I read articles about assisted reproductive technology I make the mistake of reading the comments.  While I shouldn’t find the judgment and hostility surprising—“trolls” make nasty little comments on a slew of topics—I still feel the need to offer some defense of the use of fertility treatments such as IVF.

Some of the comments focus on the obvious—fertility treatments are expensive.  They suggest that money could better be used elsewhere.  Fair enough, but that’s true of just about everything.  Do you have cable?  Go out to eat?  Go on vacation?  Fine, spend your money how you want.  Don’t judge how I spend mine.  (Although I must admit a portion of my treatments have been covered by insurance.  In that way I am lucky, but I would have made the exact same choices with my own money.)

Others make the argument that infertile couples should just adopt.  Again, fair enough, and many couples do make that choice.  But as anyone who has adopted, or looked into adopting, can tell you, it’s no cakewalk.  Like fertility treatments, adoption is expensive.  Like fertility treatments, adoption is stressful.  And like fertility treatments, adoption might not work out.  Adoption is not the right choice for everyone, and I don’t think it’s wrong to want to have biological children, be pregnant, be guaranteed a newborn, or any of the other reasons people choose to try to have biological children instead of adopting.  Also, I find the whole “there are so many kids looking for homes, so just adopt” argument a little hard to swallow coming from anyone who hasn’t made the choice to adopt.  The fact that there are lots of kids that need homes is true whether someone is dealing with infertility or not.  (Along these lines, I have no patience for the “world population is too large” arguments either.  Again, that’s true whether the parents are fertile or infertile.  And, see my comments below on fertility treatment parents being the best kinds of parents—ones who want kids.)

Likewise, I can’t engage with or take seriously anyone who goes on the rampage about fertility treatments being “unnatural.”  Yea, so is brushing your teeth. Vitamins.  Chemo.  Get over it.

Instead of attacking people who decide to use fertility treatments, we should be celebrating people who really, really want to be parents.  I believe most people who try this hard to be parents and ultimately succeed are really good parents….  Probably better parents than the judgmental assholes trolling articles and making anonymous mean comments.