Some interesting news out of Ireland: in a groundbreaking move, the Department of Health plans to provide free cycles of IVF and fertility treatment to Irish citizens who can’t conceive without assistance.
Doctors will face up to one year’s imprisonment, however, if they give ‘fertility treatment’ to any woman over the age of 47. This seems to mean any treatment that assists with conception and pregnancy.
It is also proposed that doctors (or anyone? It’s not clear) using donor eggs from a woman over the age of 35 could face a year in prison.
In addition, anyone engaging in any form of commercial surrogacy could face jail time of up to five years.
As is usual in Ireland, it’s difficult to find any news on this – I got this information from a print newspaper, The Sunday Times. I’m not sure yet whether these restrictions will apply only to the free, government-subsidized fertility treatment, or to absolutely all fertility treatment in Ireland.
Is the age cut-off draconian? Personally speaking, I wouldn’t want to be doing IVF after about the age of 42. I felt old and embarrassed doing it at 38, but I appreciate that’s just me.
I certainly raised both eyebrows when I read about this bill.
Can you imagine a doctor going to prison for one year for giving fertility treatment to a woman of 48?
Seems a bit mental.
Holy Cow. I don’t even know where to begin on this one, so I won’t. Too many controversial responses running in my head to comment with my opinion. Whew!
There are women here (U.S.) who’ve done IVF in their 50’s. Although, it’s likely insurance did not cover it. Personally, I would’ve preferred being an elderly GRANDparent, not an elderly parent.
I’m guessing it’s the government that doesn’t want to pay for these things (in Ireland). But, some governments have been known to take away peoples’ rights to do what they want with their own health even when paying themselves. Very scary in so many ways.
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I’ll be really interested to read what their justification was for the cut off; I can’t find a clear explanation at the moment except that they’re focusing very, very heavily on the ‘welfare’ and ‘best interests’ of the child…
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Seems rather extreme?!
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It does
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So repulsive. I’m 43 and didn’t start DEIVF until I was 41 (I couldn’t fathom trying regular IVF in my 40s because the success rate to birth is like 3% or something), and am so nauseated by governments trying to tell women if and when then can and can’t reproduce. Some may not want to have kids later but some like myself are absolutely in a great place to bring a child in the world, both emotionally and financially, a hell of a lot more than when I was 30 and getting ready to divorce my former alcoholic and emotionally abusive spouse. I just don’t get it – and of course these people trying to control women’s bodies (at least here in the US) are the same people who say “keep your hands off my guns”.
But hey don’t worry, sounds like here in the US our dickwad president is supporting getting rid of all forms of birth control education including promotion of “the rhythm method” and referring to the pill as an “abortofacient”. What the living fuck. I saw President Obama on TV the other day and started balling.
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I agree that women find themselves in the right place at widely varying ages – it’s pretty draconian to ban DEIVF after age 47. Trump makes me gag. I also saw Obama on TV the other day (hugging the mother or wife of a dead soldier, I think it was) and found myself staring in absolute mute wonder at the screen and thinking: how the holy goddamn f*** did we go from that to Trump?? It’s surreal.
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So many potential angles and views to this…….I’m wondering what the laws are based on, real scientific research and data on the ramifications of fertility treatments, or on prejudice and paranoia? Like most things it probably goes back to money, for better and for worse. My initial not thought out reaction was that the 47 year old cut off (jail time aside), at least for IVF with one’s own eggs, is generous, given the chances of it working at that age are practically zero. But I realize there are many sides to this. The industry no doubt needs to be regulated, and though I’m not sure this is the way to do it it’ll be interesting to see what comes of this. Thanks for highlighting it.
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I’m actually dying to know what the laws are based on, it’s really intriguing
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42 was my cut off too. I remember though at 47 I went from wondering if I might be miraculously pregnant, to fearing I might be miraculously pregnant. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be pregnant at 47 (for any number of reasons), and I accept that clinics helping women of that age wouldn’t get funding. And I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of women that age and older getting fertility treatment. But imprisonment???
Also, the donor egg thing is odd. We had wondered about using my sister’s eggs, but as she was 37, the clinic said that they wouldn’t accept her as a donor. Turns out her eggs were fine. Sigh. (She went and gave birth at … yes … 42. Salt, wound, etc. )
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I think it’s acceptable not to fund older women with public money if the odds are low. Privately-funded DEIVF is a personal thing: I myself felt too old at about 42, but I appreciate that other women can be a ‘young’ 50. Ah god, your sister – it could have just been a flukey good egg when she was 42… but I hear you there.
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Oh man, I am so conflicted here. I think I get where they are coming from, looking at what’s ethical — if you use an egg donor who’s over 35, chances are there could be undisclosed (and unknown) fertility issues and chromosomal abnormalities that are minimally less risky than your own eggs. A lot of places in the US have age cutoffs for egg donors anyway, but I don’t think there’s a legal stipulation. The no IVF after 47 is interesting, because I know someone whose sister did IVF (presumably with donor eggs) and gave birth to twins at FIFTY years old, and while there were definitely additional risks it worked out okay (although the idea of being 68 when your children graduate from high school is daunting to me personally). I guess the extremism is what gets me, it seems a bit Handmaid’s Tale-esque, because the government is deciding things for you and your body. Who should decide you’re too old to attempt IVF, you and your doctor or the government? And does this open the way for other reproductive health restrictions? There’s the whole “just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD” argument with treatments after a certain age, but should the government decide that and then make it punishable by prison if you disagree? Slippery slope, I think. But interesting to read about, that’s for sure.
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The DE doctor I saw briefly when I was 38 told me he’d “just got a 51 year-old and a 53-year-old pregnant”. The 53-year-old, he said, was “a young 53”, she was fine. The 51-year-old however, he told me, was “old – a really old 51” and he “felt sorry for her”. He was doing these pitying, head-shaking, trepidation-filled faces at me – as if he’d had nothing to do with it! – and then he told me I should get a dog if I was not “absolutely desperate”. I walked away from the whole clinic scene after that – it just spooked me. Yes, “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” – every new development unnerves me, because it makes people who’ve resolved to live childfree think “what if?”. But yes, this level of control from the government is a bit sci-fi – nothing surprising in Ireland, though.
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Oh wow. That’s totally mental. I’m really interested to know now if this is ALL fertility treatments. And as a donor egg recipient… yikes. That’s a pretty tight control…
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It really is…
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The donor egg cut off at 35 sounds too young to me, I’d say 38 maybe. My reaction to the fertility treatment not being allowed at 47 was similar to Infertility Honesty’s. At that age the odds of it working with your own eggs are so slim it seems cruel for a doctor to get someone’s hopes up and let them do the treatment knowing what they are putting themselves through. The fact that they are planning to offer free fertility treatment to people going through infertility is a positive move though!
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It’s definitely positive, you don’t get much for free over here!
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I think my country has the cutoff at 44 for state-funded treatments, which I think is reasonable. However I don’t understand how can they justify denying treatment altogether! And how can they justify not banning men over 47 from reproducing?
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Very true: I was wondering about men too
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Wow. My great-grandmother gave birth to her sixth & last child when she was 47 (obviously without the aid of IVF in those days)… she was (& no doubt still is) the oldest woman ever to give birth at the local hospital. (The baby, my great-aunt, carried that with her for her entire life… she HATED being known as the baby born to a 47-year-old mom!) I used to joke that I was waiting for genetics to kick in… but the older I got (and the closer I got to 47) the more I realized that, much as I had wanted a child, i did NOT want to be 47 & giving birth & doing late night feedings & diapers. I find it difficult to judge other women if they feel differently, though. I think 42 is a relatively common cutoff age at some clinics, although I’m not sure why — my guess is that at that point the chance of success (especially with your own eggs) becomes so unlikely that it’s not considered worthwhile (particularly when clinic stats are at risk… :p ). I would understand not wanting to provide public funding for these cases. However, while I’m no great fan of drs & clinics that hold out endless carrots of hope with very little realistic chance of success, I do think prison seems rather harsh. If you’re going to penalize doctors (& that’s a big “if”), fines or revoking licenses (especially for repeat offenders) would seem more appropriate, I think.
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I too can’t imagine having a baby at 47; I already feel absolutely crap all the time at 45, I think a newborn baby would finish me off. Also, yes: however well-loved and well-cared for kids of older parents are, they do hate having their parents mistaken for grandparents and not fitting in.
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Ugh, this is tricky for me… my own mother was 44 when she had me and although I know it was a rarity back in the day then, she coped… yes, I used to get people thinking my grandmother was waiting at the school gates for me and the general public referring to my mother as my grandmother – however, it had no adverse affect on me… I grew up knowing I was loved, my mother had more patience with me than friends younger mothers and she was generally usually at home or not far from home whilst I was a child, not harried and harrassed as my peers parents were – like my mum used to say, she’d done all her partying and gadding about when she was younger and had it all out of her system.
I think what disturbs me about this news is that it’s all about women and there’s no mention of men – why, oh why Ireland are you constantly trying to manipulate women in some form or another? Why is everything around the whole uterus so frightening/causing angst for the powers that be?
Ok, I’m 49 and I definitely would not want to have a toddler around me at this stage of my life as I’m mostly knackered all the time – but I wouldn’t want to be dictated to and threatened with a custodial sentence either if I were a doctor, had a desperate person on my books who had the means to do IVF and knew I could help her. Are they thinking of a custodial sentence for ladies who get pregnant too? It all sounds a bit like the old workhouses back in the day where the women and children were bundled away out of sight, out of mind for ridiculous misdemeanours like stealing bread.
Definitely great that funding is going to be made available, but definitely a bit Charles Dickens about the draconian way of going about imprisoning people!
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I agree it’s a very uncomfortable situation here in Ireland – they have forever been trying to control women’s bodies and things are only changing extremely slowly.
To be honest I wish my own parents had been older – they were 17 and 18 when they had my sibling and a couple of years older when they had me. They didn’t seem to enjoy parenting and I know that my mother absolutely did not want babies at that age. They were harassed and angry all the time and there was no closeness with them. I know if they’d had kids later it might have been much different.
Yes a custodial sentence, say for assisting a 48-year-old woman with DEIVF, seems to be very backward-thinking. And I presume two gay men of 47+, for example, would be able to use their sperm plus an ‘altruistic’ surrogate to have a baby. Seems very unfair?
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I don’t have much to add to people’s observations above, except that I think passing any kind of law around fertility treatments is going to be controversial and difficult, because there are so many emotions and social mores and values involved. I think there still have to be laws though, because there’s plenty of motivation for doctors and scientists to push the boundaries of what is possible. When it comes to humans: if it can be done, somebody somewhere is going to try it, and maybe already has tried it. That doesn’t mean “it” is a good idea, whether it’s older mothers and fathers or genetic manipulation or who knows what. Empathy for individuals must be balanced with a critical view of what is the greater good. Maybe this law is not so much about what fertility treatments people are doing now as it is about what they might try at a future time?
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