An increasing number of women are intentionally becoming single mothers through the use of assisted reproductive technology (ART). No longer waiting to find a man willing to parent with them, women can find a sperm donor and go through in vitro fertilization (IVF) to get pregnant. Although it may be more common to raise children solo, the popularity of single motherhood doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.
Citing the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority (HFEA), a new article in the Huffington Post noted that the number of single women going through donor insemination cycles increased 109% between 2011 and 2021, compared to the previous decade. They also noted that the number of women going through IVF using donor sperm has increased by 178%. The outlet then claimed to give women all the information they needed to become single mothers by choice; however, it failed to point out how doing so affects the children who are created.
The first thing to note about IVF is that there are inevitably more children destroyed than born during the process, even under the best circumstances. Each round of IVF carries just a 20%-30% success rate. So while an estimated one million people have been born thanks to IVF, 1.7 million have died, and another million are said to be currently frozen in the United States alone. Some embryos don’t survive the process while others are intentionally destroyed for not having the “right” genetic characteristics.
There are also physical risks to IVF. Children created through IVF have increased risk of low birth weight, premature birth, hospital admission, perinatal mortality, high blood pressure, advanced bone age, hormonal imbalances, and cerebral palsy, as well as “significantly” increased risk of birth defects. Other studies have found an elevated risk of cardiovascular problems, early-onset acute lymphoblastic leukemia, an increased risk of cancer in general, epigenetic disorders, cognitive impairment, and possible infertility.
If women knew about these increased risks, would they still voluntarily choose IVF?
Additionally, creating children in this manner — seeking out donor sperm and undergoing IVF as an intentional single mother — by definition turns a child into a commodity to be purchased and created on demand.
“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,” Katie Breckenridge, of the children’s rights advocacy organization Them Before Us, has explained.
READ: Though their three-day marriage ended in tragedy, God brought new life
This feeling isn’t unusual; a Harvard Medical School study found that 62% of children conceived through donor technologies believe it to be unethical and immoral. After all, each and every one of these children is being deprived of one of their biological parents, as well as the knowledge of their own biological background and heritage.
Research has found that children who live in a home with their married, biological parents are healthier both physically and mentally; children who live with their biological mother and an unrelated male, however, are 11 times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused.
It’s inevitable that children will sometimes be raised in a home without both biological parents; this can happen due to a number of factors, ranging from death to divorce. But there is a massive difference between making the best out of a tragic situation and intentionally keeping a child from her parent, simply because you feel like it. The draw to become a parent is, understandably, powerful, and it can be emotionally devastating to have to let that dream go. That doesn’t make it acceptable to turn a child into a product to be purchased at will, though; children are not objects that adults are entitled to have.
As Katy Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us, has pointed out, children conceived in such a way are well aware of their own commodification. “One story from a now-adult child on our website says her parent would often say, ‘Do you know how much I paid for you?'” Faust wrote on Instagram. She added, “The ‘would you rather be dead?’ retort is often said to kids who were told how ‘loved and wanted’ they were, when in reality, their dads were paid $75 to stay out of their lives forever.”
