Call For Fertility Ban For Obese Women
These days many NHS trusts take obesity into account over access to fertility therapy and some experts think that very obese women should be denied fertility treatment. Current guidelines state that overweight women should be made aware of the health risks when trying to get pregnant when obese, but do not impose any ban.
Obese women are less likely to become pregnant and more likely to encounter health problems and medical complications. Being overweight is linked to problems including gestational diabetes and high blood pressure.
The British Fertility Society recommend that women with a body mass index of 36 and over should not be allowed access to fertility treatment. Equally underweight women (with a body mass index over 29) should be forced to address their weight before starting treatment. They have published their recommendations in a bid to end the IVF “postcode lottery.” They would like to see standardized treatment so that clinics use the same criteria regarding age, family status, weight and so on.
What Do The British Fertility Society Proposals Include?
- all clinics would operate under the same rules
- very obese women would not be able to get IVF
- women over 40 should not be treated
- couples who have not had children together would be eligible
- having had private IVF would not stop couples having IVF treatment
- same sex couples and single women should be treated in the same way as heterosexual couples
- smokers should not be barred from having IVF
These recommendations were made after surveying sixty four fertility clinics in England and Wales.
Clare Brown, chief executive of Infertility Network UK said: "From our own surveys and from the many, many calls we receive from patients, we know only too well that there are still unacceptable inequalities in the funding of treatment around the country and couples face huge difficulties in accessing services."
But Josephine Quintavalle, of the organisation Comment on Reproductive Ethics, told BBC Five Live limited NHS budgets needed to be focused on treatment for groups which would benefit the most.
"If it's a proven fact that it's very difficult to get pregnant when you're overweight, then the logical cure for that kind of infertility is to encourage the patient to lose weight."
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