h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was listening to a debate on the radio the other day discussing single women receiving IVF. An argument put forward by a single woman was it was her "right" to have a baby and she pays just as much tax into the NHS as couples so she should get the same treatment.

A man who called in and suggested men should equally have the "right" to be fathers was howled down by the women.

But the point I found most interesting was the suggestion that "rights" are about man-made laws - ie the right to a fair trial, the right to not be discriminated against. But things like the "right" to have babies are faintly ridiculous.

How do others feel? Are we getting a bit "Life of Brian" as a society?

given that low fertility in men is potentially as devastating for fatherhood as that of low fertility in women, I would say that the right to become a parent is equal for both sexes. But, is it not just a tad easier for a single man to become a dad? Just saying . . . it's the complex mechanics and difficulties of pregnancy versus the donation of a sperm to a healthy surrogate mother?

So many of my women friends were unable to bear their own children and were crushed by procedures that kept failing over and over again. I also have a couple of male friends who have missed the chance to become fathers, but they seem better adapted to cope with life without children of their own. I suppose these men might not be representative of the whole of the male gender, so this is only my personal reflection of the situation.

Rights are something we invent to distinguish ourselves from animals. They are a method of limiting, by social pressure, what other people can do to us, or alternatively a method of requiring of other people certain standards of behaviour.

So, for instance, I have a "right" to life. Which is to say, you or anyone else can't kill me with impunity.

However, in the real world, lots and lots of other things can kill me whenever they like. A falling rock has no regard for my "rights".

If we decide that a woman has a "right" to have a baby, then she has that right. All it means is that nobody can stop her from trying to have one (by sterilising her against her will, for instance), and that if she finds that a falling rock is disregarding her "right", society has to try, at least, to catch that rock before it hits her - i.e. it has to provide her with medical help to conceive.

The debate is simply whether her "right" to have a child trumps MY right to have the taxes I pay spent on things I believe to be more important. Sadly, it appears the rights of such women do, in fact, outweigh my right to withhold my taxes from funding that treatment.

As for a man's right to be a father...

On the one hand, any fertile man can become a father depressingly easily. Whether it's possible to do so with a mother you'd wish on a child is another question.

On the other, a single, infertile man has one realistic avenue: adoption. And realistically, few single men are likely to be given a child to adopt. Ultimately, the rights of the child trump the rights of the man. Any "right" you might imagine a man might have to become a father comes so far down the list of priorities of rights that it may as well not exist.

In the modern civilised world, almost invariably the rights of males are subordinate to the rights of females, especially where care of children are concerned.

Saying you pay the same into the NHS so you should get the same treatment is specious: she's a single woman. BY DEFINITION, her right to breed is outweighed by a child's right to have a complete family. That doesn't mean she shouldn't be treated, necessarily, but it does mean she has a lesser right to treatment than a couple. IMHO.

An analogy: George Best paid a good deal more into the NHS than, say, my old grandad. However, I would suggest that my teetotal old grandad had a greater "right" to a liver transplant than Gorgeous George, onnaccounta my granpa's liver failure was not his own fault. Clinical decisions like that are based on far, far more than simple cost, and anyone who says "I paid in, I should get treated" is, I think, right at the back of the queue marked "suitable to be a parent". If you can limit that kind of person's capacity to breed, I think you absolutely should. We've enough mercenary "I know my rights" chavs in the world already, thanks.

I suppose most of the problem is society
I mean we have a right to free speech but perhaps if your very biased
or wrong or know absolutely nothing on a topic you shouldn't be allowed to speak to the nation about it, or if you are you certainly shouldn't be given the same weight as someone who actually knows something about what they are saying,

I think the children thing is interesting, it can be devastating for a woman to learn she can't have children partly because we have a biological urge to reproduce and women do get broody (like chickens) when we see other peoples children, but is it not also partly to do with society where woman are meant to have children and a woman without a child is somehow seen to be faulty (for want of a better word)
where as yes a man might feel the urge to reproduce (not being a man i don't personally know) and they might get broody (don't think its as big a problem in men but then i don't know....) but socially a man isn't under as much pressure to have those little humans containing half there genetics following them around,

also it could be said that it is the fault of society for making women wait longer before having children (I'm not saying anyone should rush into it when they are sixteen or anything like that) waiting till after you have a career till after your experienced in a job and generally till your almost forty. now anyone will be able to tell you that once a woman reaches a certain age they find it markably more difficult to have children but at the same time we can't say that women should stay at home and have children, no-one would be able to afford it and many wouldn't want to even if they could,
should ivf be a right - NO
but it should still remain an option for woman who have tried all other options and need a little extra help. but really, why not adopt if children are that important there are many waiting for homes, should that not be as important as ivf does it really need to be our genes? are grandmas brown eyes and our husbands big noise really that necessary?

I agree that rights are a mutually mutual convenience. Nobody *really* thinks they are inalienable.

On the other hand...in some cases, its best to act as though they are. We simply don't have time to stop and think about individual cases. And if we do...How do we decide when we are justified in deviating from the norm? What if we're setting precedents that will come to bite us later?

It's odd, though, that Rights are sometimes regarded as a burden. People make deeply peculiar statements like:

>>We've enough mercenary "I know my rights" chavs in the world already, thanks.

(Are you really bothered about people *saying* that? Nobody's actually *doing* anything as a result.)

Take the United Nations Convention on Human Rights. http://www.hrea.org/feature-events/simplified-crc.html Unicef do some excellent work promoting this in UK schools. Its not just about 'help the starving kiddies' in Africa, either. Schools can attain the standard of 'Rights Respecting Schools'. Guess what? Standards of discipline improve. 'I've a right to education. You're infringing my right by messing around'. See Article 42.

Maybe a woman shouldn't have a right to conceive. I'll go with that.

*But* If she wants to and can't...couldn't we maybe help her out? Simply as altruists? Much the same way that we help, say, people with self-inflicted knee injuries get back on the five-a-side pitch. I have no qualms about that either.

As I believe I said once, already, the debate is not whether she has the right or not. The debate is simply whether her "right" to have a child trumps MY right to have the taxes I pay spent on things I believe to be more important. Sadly, it appears the rights of such women do, in fact, outweigh my right to withhold my taxes from funding that treatment.

The UN Declaration on Human Rights does specify right to a family/family life and actually goes into quite a lot of detail on what constitutes a family life. It's not legally binding but still very influential and in 1948 it was an incredible statement of intent and I guess that's still what it, and all talk of rights, is: something we aspire to, something we feel is important and will do our best to punish those who ignore it.

We can all think of times when different rights are ignored or one right overules another (though the tax one is a bit of a red herring: we've never had the right to decide where our taxes go and nor should we. Taxes can't work like that) but we still value the idea of the right. Personally I think rights are the mark of a mature and advanced society, one that accepts sacrifices have to be made and restrictions tolerated because it helps us all and does even out some of the inequalities.

It should be a communal thing and it winds me up when people take the p*ss - every time a kid screams at me they have rights I want to make them show me exactly where they think they've got that right from - but if has to be a one-sided process then so be it. It's worth having.

>>The UN Declaration on Human Rights does specify right to a family/family life and actually goes into quite a lot of detail on what constitutes a family life.

nnn...surely UNDHR -> ECHR -> HRA?

*But* - it is one of the contingent rights. I have personally infringed it for more than one family when it has been superseded by a child's rights under the UNDRC. (But even then there has been a legal duty to maintain the right to family life as far as it is possible and consistent with the child's interests)

I'll probably get shot down in flames for this....

If a couple can't conceive naturally they can, of course, go down the IVF route, which is potentially incredibly costly and not guaranteed to result in the birth of a sprog. Would it not be better for the couple and society if they were steered along the adoption/fostering route as an alternative to IVF?

No kids myself, so maybe this is already the case, but you do read about people having two, three or more kids by IVF, yet adoption and fostering agencies are still crying out for more people prepared to give these young people a chance at a family life. And you do hear some remarkable success stories from people that have given this chance to numerous children.

I understand men and women have an urge to reproduce but if nature isn't letting them do so naturally then surely it would be better to accept that fact. Surely the cost of IVF would be better spent in other areas of medical research?

I don't think anyone has a right to have a child. People have rights to not being sterilised against their will of course, but the I disagree that the right extends so far in the other direction that the state should pay for AR interventions. Esp in a country where people die from underfunded health care (which is pretty much everywhere isn't it?).

*Grins* I dunno, Twiglet, that might be seen as a dangerous line of argument for someone who likes to fling himself into the ether attached to a bit of fabric and some string to take. Very applicable to the modern NHS of course though, the who deserves treatment question.

Regarding the case study, it's not about the right to have a baby, that example, though, is it? It's about the right to have the same treatment as a single woman that an in a relationship woman would get (does the NHS insist on couples being married?). Assuming she is infertile, of course. Or does that make a difference? Should lesbian couples not get IVF because the option for gay men to become fathers, well, actually does include IVF and host mothers now I think about it, not just adoption as I was going to originally suggest.

Not shooting you down in flames...but maybe the adopt/assisted conception decision is a matter for each couple?

I've never been there myself, but...'Walk a mile in someone else's shoes' (Then at least you'll be a mile away from them. Plus, you'll have their shoes.)


>>Surely the cost of IVF would be better spent in other areas of medical research?

Possibly. I know there are budgetary constraints, but in reality it's darned difficult to prioritise between different treatments or areas of research. Do we want to pour money into spinal injuries? Or visual impairment? Or premature birth? Apples, Oranges or Plums? I contend that there's no logical or systematic answer to these. All we can have is personal opinions and priorities which we have to negotiate between ourselves. And sometimes there will be conflicts and disagreements.

I think my starting point with IVF, though, would be that conception is a normal biological function. Surely medicine is (in part) about rectifying defects in function? Parenting is not quite a biological function, but if couples choose to adopt - brilliant for them!

"The right to parent", if it must be paid by society, is a questionable thing. My wife and I were unable, she having incurred to much internal damages. But while discovering this, we did investigate the IVF option at our expense. We met one couple who and re-mortgaged and borrowed and begged everywhere to try a 5th time. I do not know if that effort was more successful than the first four times. But the sheer cost they met, if that option were to be a "right" for every couple, our reasonably effective health-care system would be sucked dry in very little time. And so it would come to the 'rights' of the community at large, versus the desires and needs and wants of the very few

SoRB:
>>As I believe I said once, already, the debate is not whether she has the right or not. The debate is simply whether her "right" to have a child trumps MY right to have the taxes I pay spent on things I believe to be more important. Sadly, it appears the rights of such women do, in fact, outweigh my right to withhold my taxes from funding that treatment.


That's going a bit too far, surely? There are several other rights which trump by your right to hold taxes Right to education? Right to life, even. In fact.....just about all of them, surely? Our Rights define the structure of our civilisation, and maintaining that structure takes money.

So why is this a special case? If you choose to live in a democracy, you have to a) pay your taxes and b) accept that not all of them are spent in the way you prefer. You are having your preferences ignored - and you have a right to say so - but you are *not* having your Rights infringed.

Re adoption vs ivf.

The nhs does, currently, put limits on the availability of ivf and therefore its cost to the tax payer. You have to be pretty healthy and you get two goes (that may differ slightly in different places).

Regarding the argument the infertile couples should be the ones to ease the plight of children in need of adoption, well, umm, perhaps we could also insist that anyone with two children currently are also being selfish by insisting on having more of their own, at a cost far higher to the nhs than ivf which might, after all, fail to produce the expensive small person, and probably will result in fewer expensive to the nhs children than a particularly fertile couple might.

Perhaps couples with a history of producing the particularly expensive and arguably (not my argument, I am going for effect here) less eventually useful special needs children should also be told to adoptnext time?

After all, at least they have a track record in bringing up kids successfully (hopefully).

This is a let he who is without sin thing I think. Can we really say that all of the complaints we use the nhs to treat are that essential? Or that we are not without blame in acquiring them? The nhs already does have to make descisions about who to treat, and if we start lopping off services like those for infertile people because they are non essential or (in yhe case of the fertile single woman, self inflicted) then...

Plus many women have difficult pregnancies or births that modern medicine assists with - the statistics for childbirth death for mother and/ or baby before modern medicine took over are, in fact, pretty horrendous. So by that coin, nature isn't letting many people have a naturally sorted out baby. Should we revert to only allowing women who have successfully born a child with minimal (expensive) medical assistance give birth again?

Would that be me I wonder? Does a ventuse delivery count? I don;t think the equipment is expensive, but the doctor's skill wouldn;t come cheap all told.

Sorry, I know the question wasn;t malicious, but I do disagree with the proposition .

I think a lot of talk about "rights" (in the sense of entitlements) is actually about fairness.

At least some of what we spend on public services is used to attempt to undo unfairness, or at least reduce its impact. It's not fair that some people are sick and some people are well. Because (a) we're a reasonably civilised society, and (b) because any of us could need expensive treatment at any time, we have a system of risk sharing whereby we all pay in.

So I think someone who wants IVF on the NHS is saying something like: It's not fair that I/we cannot conceive naturally, and it's not fair that the very wealthy who are similarly afflicted can pay for IVF, and I/we can't afford it. In other areas of healthcare, it's much rarer for deeper pockets to get what others cannot. I pay into the system to help others, why cannot I receive help in turn?

As an argument, I think it's a perfectly reasonable one in isolation. My understanding is that adoption is a difficult process, and that most minors in need of adoption are not babies, and many will have complex needs of various kinds. I also think there's a kind of biological or genetic imperative to have your own child. If it were as simple as adopting, if adopting would satisfy that... longing.. that some people evidently feel, I think they would.

Problem is, as others have said, is that a public health service needs to make difficult rationing decisions about what to fund and what not to fund. We already have a situation where certain diseases and conditions are media friendly and are well funded and supported, for treatment and for research. And others are neglected, because they're not fashionable. Mental Health, for example.

I don't really know enough about IVF and its costs to form a view on whether it should be funded on the NHS or not. But I do wonder if costs could be reduced (new technology, bulk purchase, better negotiation) or whether there's scope for creativity about financing options ("your baby may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments").

In principle, sure, I'd like to see it funded on the NHS. In practice, given other priorities, and a government apparently hell bent on destroying it, well, it's difficult to make the case....

My eldest two received weeks of *very* expensive treatment which, only three-odd years previously, was unavailable (so factor in the research costs!)

I doubt anyone would disagree that we/I had the right to this, so I won't ask the obvious, provocative question. *However*...even I wouldn't pretend there is any clear, logical line.

And if that's true about 11 week pre-term neonates...can we be definitive about *any* kind of medical treatment?

I'm not sure there are right or wrong answers. Only best guesses.

I may have overstated by using the phrase "my right to withhold my taxes from funding that treatment."

Rather obviously, I don't have any right to withhold any of my taxes. What I was instead alluding to was my right to withdraw my support from any group advocating funding IVF, including the government. Withdrawing my support from the government, in terms of my actual rights, is limited to stopping voting for them and stopping doing anything else to help them that I might have been doing.

I have said many times and shall say again - for many, many years, I paid my taxes with a spring in my step and a song in my heart. I wholeheartedly support MOST of the things my taxes support - the criminal justice system, the armed forces, the social security benefit system, the NHS. All have their faults and problems, but all are basically things I don't mind paying for. That contentment with my status as a higher rate taxpayer ended with the bank bailouts. Can't do anything about it though. Might as well complain about the weather.