Attitude shift sees IVF babies as ‘valuable’ but naturally-conceived as ‘accidents’

After decades of forcing families to have only one child — and carrying out forced abortions — China is considering IVF for single women and telling certain citizens that they are now allowed to have more than one child. Beijing has now gone as far as to subsidize IVF in an effort to boost its declining population. In light of these changes, a grandmother in China has given birth to twin daughters following in vitro fertilization (IVF) at age 59, raising ethical questions about the practice — and foreshadowing the future of reproduction.

The woman, surname Wang, and her husband are parents to a grown son and grandparents to a little girl. According to South China Morning Post, Wang and her husband are “wealthy retirees” who could afford IVF and who wanted more children because their home felt like an “empty nest” and “cold and lifeless.” Their adult son, they explained, only visits once or twice a year. While he had no objections to their decision to do IVF, he didn’t exactly support it either.

It is unclear if Wang is the biological mother of the girls.

Ethical concerns

China’s fertility rate is well below the replacement level at 1.7 births per female, and has been climbing by a mere 0.18% annually for the last four years. Its birth rate, on the other hand — the number of births per 1,000 people — has steadily declined over 2% annually for the last four years, and currently stands below average at 10.902. The nation is facing a future economic collapse as a result.

Wang and her husband may have been forced into having just one child in their earlier years, and it’s understandable that they didn’t love their empty nest. She certainly isn’t the first woman in her 50s to get pregnant using IVF — nor is she the oldest. While the fertility industry will state that IVF is more difficult for women after the age of 50, it doesn’t seem all that willing to enforce any rules regarding this.

A 62-year-old woman gave birth using her adult daughter’s eggs and her husband’s (her daughter’s stepfather’s) sperm in 2021. In 2019, a woman allegedly gave birth at age 74 after undergoing IVF. She and her husband had never been able to have children naturally. While some women have been able to become pregnant naturally in their 50s, this is rare and when women do want to become pregnant after 50, they have to turn to IVF and possibly even donor eggs.

These children may grow up and question their identity and their worth as have so many people conceived in IVF and through reproductive technologies. They may also struggle with the feeling that their existence is nothing more than a business transaction and that they have to live up to their parents’ standards of the perfect child, whom they feel they are owed after spending all that money.

“When you are commissioning and swiping your credit card for a product, even one that you want badly, you are participating in commodification, regardless of whether the intended parents are the biological parents of the surrogate-born children. In this case, the products are human beings,” said Katie Breckenridge of the children’s rights advocacy organization Them Before Us.

Meanwhile, women who become pregnant naturally after the age of 40 (who aren’t celebrities) often face ridicule, and their children are often viewed as ‘accidents’ or ‘mistakes’ — especially if the woman already has two or more children. Even if the mother and the father view the baby as a blessing and are excited, those around them — even the doctors — sometimes attempt to shame them, labeling them “geriatric” and asking why they didn’t seek a tubal ligation. They may be questioned about their ability to raise a child at their age, turning a joyful situation into one of fear.

It leads one to question: Are children who are so “wanted” that their parents spend thousands of dollars to create them in a lab considered more valuable and worthy of life than allegedly “unplanned” children created through the natural, biological act of sex? Why is it that if a woman really “wants” babies, it doesn’t seem to matter to society how old she is or whether or not she is married as long as she uses IVF — yet women who get pregnant naturally face an onslaught of criticism?

The median age of U.S. women giving birth for the first time is now 30. Younger than that, and a woman risks being labeled “too young“; older than that, and a woman risks being labeled “too old.” At any age, women are also at risk of being criticized for being pregnant if they are still in school, working full time, not working full time, already have two or more children, or are considered not wealthy enough. Pregnancy must fit into a certain mold — controlled, if you will, along with the population.

The future of reproduction

In 2020, 1.9% of all babies born in the U.S. were created using artificial reproductive technology (ART). That number rose to 2.4% in 2021, accounting for the live births of 89,208 babies that year. This, of course, doesn’t include all of the perpetually frozen embryos or all of those who died in the process.

In addition, the use of surrogates is growing. In 2004, there were 738 births by surrogates in the U.S. That number increased to 19,000 in 2013. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the use of surrogacy is growing by about 15% each year. But the rise in surrogacy may turn to a decline even more quickly with the introduction of artificial wombs. Right now, the Extra-uterine Environment for Newborn Development (EXTEND) is being created to help extremely premature babies, but the possibility that it could someday be used from conception to birth is not to be denied.

As more women and men choose to put off childbearing until their 30s and 40s, the demand for ART and IVF will continue to grow. For those who can afford to go to such great lengths to have children, some may also use a surrogate in order to avoid any aspects of pregnancy that they deem to be negative. They could also use IVF to weed out certain children, like those who may have a disability or a genetic condition, or they may choose to test their embryonic children for traits such as hair color, eye color, gender, and more before picking a winner.

Having children via ART and surrogacy may seem more convenient and controlled than natural pregnancy, but it is helping to create a world in which children are no longer seen as gifts and blessings but as accessories and investments. The world is telling women that they are nothing more than egg producers, and likening pregnancy to slavery, preferring that women suddenly show up one day with a born baby balanced on their slender hips free of stretch marks.

Based on current trends, the future of reproduction may look more like an assembly line or sterile lab environment than anything found in nature.