Shattered Dreams: The High Cost of Reproductive Technology
A column published in The Wall Street Journal last Friday highlights the heartbreak and empty promises that assisted reproduction technology often brings.
Ruthie Ackerman writes,
I spent close to $15,000 to freeze my eggs when I was 35. I paid top dollar out of pocket at a well-respected clinic that had, as far as I knew, glowing statistics. The process allowed me to bank 14 eggs, a number my doctor enthusiastically told me could produce two children.
Yet when I returned to use my eggs six years later, none was viable. Only eight survived the thaw, and only three became embryos after being fertilized. I then waited to see if any would reach the blastocyst stage necessary for pregnancy.
None of them did.
Ackerman goes on to note how egg freezing simply isn’t the “slam dunk” or parenthood “insurance policy” that many people make it out to be. Egg freezing and in vitro fertilization can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and there is no guarantee that the eggs — or the unborn children created from them — will survive.
We have written before about the ethical problems with human egg harvesting, in vitro fertilization, commercial surrogacy, and other assisted reproductive technologies. Fertility clinics often fail to give women all the information about the risks, consequences, and alternatives associated with these processes.
Two bills filed earlier this year would have helped address this problem.
H.B. 1554 and H.B. 1795 by Rep. Alyssa Brown (R — Heber Springs) would have required fertility clinics to be licensed by the State of Arkansas and report key data related to assisted reproductive technology. Unfortunately, neither of these bills passed.
Family Council has worked for years to bring better accountability and oversight to assisted reproduction technology. We remain committed to doing exactly that.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
