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Should IVF be state-funded?
For couples grappling with infertility, one of the most daunting aspects can be the cost. Fertility treatments can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and there’s no guarantee they’ll work.
Is it a risk worth pouring your life savings into? Clearly, many people decide to do it. Many more would if they had the means.
In Israel, the government has removed worries about cost from the equation. Every Israeli woman is entitled to unlimited IVF treatments for up to two “take-home babies”, the New York Times reports. As a result, Israel has the highest rate of infertility treatments in the world. About four percent of babies are born via IVF in Israel, as compared to about one percent in the United States.
Can doctors save the fertility of young kids battling cancer?
9-year-old Dylan Hanlon has cancer. A lump in his chest turned out to be Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare cancer, fortunately caught early.
The prescribed nine months of chemotherapy doctors are using to destroy the cancer may also be destroying his chances of fathering his own children when he grows up. Numerous forms of chemotherapy, high-dose body-wide radiation, radiation aimed at the pelvis and some surgeries can leave patients unable to procreate.
About 10 percent of the 1.5 million people diagnosed with cancer last year were younger than 45, more than 15,000 of them under 20. It’s estimated that roughly half of younger patients risk either some immediate fertility damage, or for girls the prospect of menopause in their 20s or 30s. It depends on the type of cancer and treatment. Young adults have options — bank some sperm, freeze embryos or eggs. Children diagnosed before puberty don’t. Boys don’t produce sperm before puberty, ruling out sperm banking. Girls are born with all the eggs they’ll ever have but those are in an immature state, so egg-freezing isn’t an option. Continue reading »
How do you get from not pregnant to cute kid?
When I was trying (and failing) to get pregnant, I went through a period where I talked almost daily with a friend who’d gotten pregnant in about three seconds. Maybe even two. The only problem was she had severe morning sickness. It was so severe that in order to survive she had to quit her job and not move her head except to eat bagels.
So, we’d get on the phone and laugh and laugh and laugh about how mean reproduction was, how cruel, how sneaky how unpredictable. But of all the things we called reproduction, we never called it judgmental. No, for that, you’d have to turn to one Wendy Walsh, an LA based psychotherapist with two biological children who thinks women who are having trouble getting pregnant should take it as a teachable moment and adopt a baby instead. To save the planet! Just like Ted Turner says!
How old is mama?
When Wendy Wasserstein died of lymphona at age 55, a friend of mine said, “And she had her daughter when she was 48 and now she’s dead. She shouldn’t have had that baby, you have to make choices in life.” Taken aback, I said, “You know, I don’t think she knew she was going to get cancer when she had her baby.”
Truth be told, I haven’t spoken to that friend for a long time now, but I can’t imagine what she’d say if I told her there’s a 72-year-old Romanian woman out there with a 5-year-old daughter who’s considering a second child. But it’s true. Intrigued by fertility treatments involving a 70-year-old in England, the Adriana Iliescu says she’s contemplating a second, but is in “no rush.” Well, obviously. Continue reading »
It’s a heart-wrenching situation. Violet Lee, 2, suffers from a life-threatening immune disease. Today, she will begin chemotherapy treatment in preparation for a bone marrow transplant. The chemotherapy could save the toddler’s life, but it could also leave her infertile.
If an experimental surgery works, Violet may one day be able to conceive children. Just yesterday, Dr. Kutluk Oktay, a professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology and the director of the Division of Reproductive Medicine & Infertility at New York Medical College, performed the experimental “fertility preservation” procedure in which one of Violet’s ovaries was removed. The Brooklyn, New York girl may hold the dubious distinction of being the youngest person ever to undergo a fertility procedure.
Of course, Violet’s health is her parent’s primary concern. But they were devastated by the prospect that she might not be able to conceive a baby.
“It was hard enough to find out your baby needs to go through chemotherapy, but to hear your daughter will be sterile after the treatment — that one thing gets healed, but another destroyed — I felt someone punched me in the stomach,” her mom Tikesha Lee, 32, told The New York Post.
Violet’s ovary will be kept on ice until she grows up. If she wants to conceive a child, the ovary will be ready for re-implantation.
“It was important that I found a way to allow her to have children,” said her mom.
Of course, there are other ways of having children these days (adoption, surrogacy, donor eggs), but it’s hard to fault her Violet’s mother for wanting her daughter to retain the possibility of conceiving a biological child.
As an adoptee, I certainly know firsthand that families are formed in all sorts of ways, but I also wouldn’t want to break the news to my daughter that she had no chance of ever getting pregnant.
About one-third of the few dozen women who have had ovary transplants have later given birth, according to The Post. Of course, in those cases, the ovaries were only frozen for a couple of years, not decades. There’s no guarantee the procedure will work for Violet.
The surgery is experimental and, as with any surgery, it could have complications. But the potential benefits down the road could make those risks more than worthwhile. You could argue that the parents should be entirely focused on saving this girl’s life, rather than anticipating her future fertility issues. But can you blame them for wanting their daughter to have every option available to her when she grows up?
Would you let your young daughter undergo surgery for the chance at saving her from infertility? It’s a question no parent should ever have to answer.
Photo: flickr/Sugar Pond
A report published in Britain suggests that as many as 80 women a year are choosing to terminate pregnancies after successfully conceiving via in vitro fertilization.
The right-wing, anti-abortion pundits are making a huge fuss over this, calling it a tragedy that any women would go through the trouble and expense of conceiving through fertility treatments and then choose not to have the baby.
The data only show that several dozen women between the ages of 18 and 34 choose to end pregnancies conceived through IVF. There’s little proof that these pregnancies are being aborted because the women “changed their minds”. A few admitted to undergoing IVF under pressure and then choosing to abort, but most of their reasons are unknown. They may be facing health issues for themselves or terrible, even fatal, birth defects in the fetus.
Even if some IVF patients do change their minds and choose to end their pregnancies, what of it?
Giving new hope today to women who develop cancer during their childbearing years, a woman has become a mother for the second time following an ovarian transplant.
Stinne Holm Bergholdt of Denmark underwent treatment for Ewing’s Sarcoma six years ago, reports AFP, but had part of her remaining ovary removed and frozen in hopes she could preserve her fertility.
A year later — now menopausal due to chemotherapy — doctors transplanted six strips of ovarian tissue back onto her right ovary. With a little urging in the form of a course of hormones, Bergholdt was pregnant with her first child, a girl, born in 2007.
Continue reading »
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