Medical advances in IVF

I always wonder how careful I have to be with my blogged thoughts that put me at odds with the decisions and beliefs of my friends. I often hold back from posting in case I upset someone. However, this is my place for my thoughts and I am entitled to them. It does not mean I disagree with choices of others. And for me, I never verbalise in certain areas, so this is my only outlet.

In this case, I know couples with IVF children.

This morning I heard on the radio about medical researchers in Auckland discovering that more ‘sticky’ embryos would increase a woman’s chance of holding a pregnancy. I began to wonder about the true effects of IVF on the size of the population. Are couples that cannot conceive part of the universe’s natural control on human inhabitation? And compared to back in the day when there was no IVF, were potentially higher birth rates due to no contraception and ‘uneducated’ younger mothers counterbalanced by higher death rates? People are now living longer and people who are unable to have children naturally are now able to have children through medical advances so is it not a reasonable conclusion to come to that the population will indeed get out of control? … I sound a bit like a tree-hugger … Although widespread killers like AIDS and cancer take their fair share so is this now the natural control on the population? … Now I’m starting to sound a bit like a Jehovah’s Witness …

In the whole context of natural selection, is this a reversal? There’s no way that I’m saying that if people can’t have children then they have no right to because they will upset the process of natural selection. In my own personal experience, it makes me wonder how ‘nature’ chooses that some people cannot have children just the same as ‘nature’ chooses to weed out the population by eliminating through cancer.

In my choice to be childfree, am I subconsciously bothered by the challenge against the natural selection process or is ‘nature’ at work and I am actually not making a conscious choice, I am just ‘switched off’? I thought I had made a choice.