I wrote about a very similar topic back in February, but it comes up again and again. And it probably will come up many more times, even after they stop asking me for a soundbyte.
According to the article that the people at NPR sent me, it appears that IVF may be somewhat more effective in creating pregnancies than we thought it was. Or maybe not. I read the article through and through, and there were a number of different ways to interpret the data. What do we use for the baseline? How successful is what we used to call ‘trying’ in achieving a pregnancy? How successful is ‘unprotected intercourse’ as they sometimes call it? (How successful is not trying? Ask young woman if they’ve ever had an ‘accidental’ pregnancy -- it’s not all that rare now is it?) Anyway, reading the new studies, it seems like if we are willing to buy eggs from younger women, putting them at who-knows-what risk, opening up baby-making to yet more market-place values, raise yet more identity and relationship issues for the children we so conceive, it may indeed be more possible than previously thought for women in their 40’s and up to produce a live baby.
So what if it is indeed true? What if the IVF rates, with purchased eggs (euphemistically called ‘donated,’ but only very rarely does an older woman have a younger woman ready to ‘donate’ eggs for her) are just as good as the pregnancy rates for young women? What if we just stop arguing the data, and say ‘so what?’ Is it a good thing that young and healthy women who want education and good careers cannot in any way, not in time nor in money nor in energy, afford children? Is it a good thing for children to become a mid-life project? Is it a good thing to conquer the biological clock for reproduction if the rest of the biological clock – the one for diabetes, stroke, dementia – keeps ticking? We’ve had older men fathering children, often second-sets of them, as lovely late-life projects. But those men usually had young wives to mother the kids, care for them through the aging and death of the father. These delayed-childbearing women are less likely to have young partners to pick up the reins. What are we wishing on our children? And what are the costs for all of the women involved, the ones who delay, the ones who sell eggs, the ones who succeed in late-life baby-making and the ones who don’t?
To listen to the interview, click here
