by Robert Laws

Created on: October 02, 2009

If a woman had fertility treatment for her first child and would like to go through the same procedure for her second, I see no reason why she should not do so, providing she has the financial means to pay for the treatment and to raise the child. This is true regardless of whether the infertility issue is with the woman or the man.

If a woman already has 10 children and wants fertility treatment to give her more, I do not think she should proceed. However, for the sake of equality, I see no more justification for preventing her from proceeding than for preventing a fertile couple from having their 11th child. Fertility treatment is a 'man-made' alternative to natural conception and it is not the method of conception, as much as the result of the conception, that is the potential problem. In other words, if the population reaches a point where it can no longer be supported, it does not make it any better that the population was all naturally conceived.

As most people consider more than 10 children too many and 2 children acceptable, where do we draw the line? How many existing children become too many to say that a woman should undergo fertility treatment to have more? There are two main factors that influence our thoughts on this matter. The first is the issue of the practicalities of raising so many children and the second is the world impact of increasing the global population.

Clearly, the more children you have, the more expensive life becomes, but apart from the financial costs, how many young children can a single parent care for at one time? How much love and attention can a parent shower on each individual child as the group grows larger? How can the parents find time to juggle their non-parenting responsibilities as their number of children increases? It would be nice to think that everyone is responsible and would consider these questions and costs before deciding on more children, thereby finding their own natural right number of children. Unfortunately, we all know that some people are just not that responsible.

With regard to the world impact, we have been fortunate so far in our history to be able to reproduce as fast and often as we like (if we ignore relatively recent Chinese laws). Our ability to reproduce and adapt has helped us combat diseases and natural disasters and survive as a race. As our advancements in medicine and other sciences have provided us with better health and living conditions, our population has expanded rapidly.

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