We are in complete control

.. or not. Carolyn Moynihan writes about the grief at the end of delayed motherhood and the promises of IVF. She is reasonably incredulous at "delaying adulthood". One might as well attempt to delay gravity -- which can meet with some success, but only up to a certain point. Motherhood at 45? IVF as a catch all? Time to rethink that.

Nature is resistant to many attempts at tampering. Time. Space. Mass. Energy. Particles. Things follow set laws that aren't easy, nor always safe, to mess with (report by Louise Hall, The Age):

The chairman of the IVF Directors Group and member of the Fertility Society of Australia, Michael Chapman, said pleas to the Federal Government to fund a public health campaign about the increased risks of miscarriage and pregnancy complications for older mothers and defects in their babies had fallen on deaf ears. This week the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Britain published a statement on reproductive ageing, reaffirming that biologically, the optimum period for childbearing is between ages 20 and 35. .. the example of celebrity older mothers .. gave women the wrong impression .. .. one thing that is not revealed in magazine articles is many of these celebrities are not using their own eggs, but a donor egg Figures show that the live birth rate for women under 35 undergoing IVF is 31 per cent. This falls below 5 per cent for women over 42.

When Does Life Really Begin?

According to Associate Professor Maureen Condic: it begins at conception. Her white paper, "When Does Life Begin?", is online from the Westchester Institute. Here's an excerpt of an interview she gave Zenit.org (emphasis mine):

Q: You define the moment of conception as the second it takes for the sperm and egg to fuse and form a zygote. What were the scientific principles you used to arrive at this conclusion? Condic: The central question of "when does human life begin" can be stated in a somewhat different way: When do sperm and egg cease to be, and what kind of thing takes their place once they cease to be? To address this question scientifically, we need to rely on sound scientific argument and on the factual evidence. Scientists make distinctions between different cell types (for example, sperm, egg and the cell they produce at fertilization) based on two simple criteria: Cells are known to be different because they are made of different components and because they behave in distinct ways. These two criteria are used throughout the scientific enterprise to distinguish one cell type from another, and they are the basis of all scientific (as opposed to arbitrary, faith-based or political) distinctions. I have applied these two criteria to the scientific data concerning fertilization, and they are the basis for the conclusion that a new human organism comes into existence at the moment of sperm-egg fusion.

Legislating for the next generation

That is precisely what legislators did when they voted for both the Abortion Law Reform bill (passed in both houses of the Victorian Parliament, only amendments may be possible) and the Assisted Reproduction Treatment bill (passed the lower house). These are votes to repeat the mistakes in other countries. A generation stolen from the womb, or a generation undergoing social experiment.

Update: Here's an argument for the social experiment of redefining parenthood and raising children with any number of parents. Good luck finding data to support that. Oh, that doesn't really matter, does it? That explains why they didn't bother with data.

IVF bill for gay and lesbian parents passes the Lower House

Ever get that feeling that we're getting hit from multiple angles? So while many are on the phone and email (among others) to their MPs concerning the Abortion Law Reform bill, this IVF bill has zoomed past. It still has the Upper House to hurdle, however, and I hope those who are concerned can muster the time to voice concerns to the Legislative Council about this one, too. Both bills are fraught with problems, e.g., lack of data, foresight, appreciation for the big picture, etc.