Public want restrictions on IVF treatment
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Your support makes all the difference.The public wants restrictions on eligibility for fertility treatment, a poll revealed yesterday, as it emerged that a woman who has given up three children and undergone two abortions has been recommended for IVF on the NHS.
The woman has already given birth to three naturally conceived children, who were taken away for adoption after allegations that their father and grandfather were involved in sexual abuse.
Doctors are backing the application by the woman, who has also had two abortions and can no longer conceive naturally because a sexually transmitted disease has damaged her fallopian tubes. The woman, an unemployed 30-year- old from south London, has lived with her unemployed partner for 10 years.
Her GP and John Parsons, an infertility specialist hoping to treat her at King's College Hospital in London, are urging the hospital's ethics committee to sanction the treatment. Mr Parsons was reported yesterday as saying there were "no circumstances" in which he would not treat someone.
The hospital yesterday refused to comment on the case but said that Mr Parsons would make a statement today.
The case looks likely to intensify the debate over eligibility for fertility treatment following the decision by Mandy Allwood, 32, to try to give birth to octuplets after receiving fertility drugs.
In an NOP poll for the Sunday Times, 74 per cent of those asked said fertility treatment should be available only to married couples or people in a "stable relationship". Only 19 per cent said fertility treatment should be available to any woman.
Thirty-nine per cent said abortion was "too easy" while 40 per cent said "things are about right".
The poll found 64 per centbelieved the laws should be reviewed in the light of recent medical advances, while 26 per cent felt the present situation was adequate.
Asked about the Mandy Allwood case, 53 per cent said she should abort some of the foetuses to give the others a better chance of survival, while 23 per cent said she should proceed with the pregnancy in the hope that all eight will survive.
But Ms Allwood, in a series of interviews published in the News of the World and designed to answer her critics, referred to her desire to let nature take its course and said that no one could predict the outcome. Under the headline "I'm doing this for love, not money", Ms Allwood, of Solihull, West Midlands, who is 14 weeks pregnant, denied that her decision had been influenced by lucrative media deals. "I didn't go to my GP asking for eight babies," she said.
Ms Allwood, who had fertility treatment without the knowledge of her partner, said the couple had always planned to have a baby. She had undergone treatment "just to make sure it happened".
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