In the news today the Victorian government have announced that Police checks for IVF patients are now mandatory. The countries “top IVF experts” have condemned the move, and looking around at opinions online it seems that many people are agreed, I, on the other hand, am completely torn.
I have no personal experience with IVF, but in the Mother’s group I’ve been part of since Declan was conceived, more than half have struggled with infertility issues, and I have seen many IVF journeys over the last three years that we’ve been together. IVF is already a traumatic enough procedure, it takes a toll on a mother’s body, on both of the parents mental state and of course financially. Adding yet another step in the road on an already difficult ride is just making matters worse. I also feel that if the counseling and interviews that are required when going through treatment should be able to weed out anyone that isn’t suitable as a parent. Lets not also forget that police checks (at least when I had mine) have a six week turn around time on average. Six weeks may not be an age, but when you’re waiting on a piece of paper so that someone can allow you to start a family, it can certainly seem like one. There’s also a question of where the line should be drawn. If you’re requiring police checks for an embryo transfer, what about the woman who can’t concieve without Clomid? Should those parents have to go through the same checks before she’s given the prescription?
But then imagine if out of all the IVF treatments that one clinic preforms, imagine if five, even ten years down the track, one or both of the parents are found to be abusive. This child that has been artificially created by that clinic has been suffering at the hands of their parent, and if a background check had been done at the time of conception it would have been discovered that one of the parents had previously been charged with child abuse. How are the staff at that clinic supposed to feel knowing that they had aided a child coming into this world to live that life, and knowing that with one check the
parents could have been deemed unsafe and that child would have never have been born to see that life.
No we don’t have police checks for parents to be when the child is conceived naturally. I wish we could. The only way I could ever see that working is to automatically run a police check on both parents when a birth is registered, highlighting any dangers that would then allow authorities and DOCs to keep a closer eye on the family. Unfortunately as we’ve seen in all of the horrendous child abuse cases that have slipped under the radar lately, DOCs is already overstretched and under funded as it is.
It’s invasive and it’s discriminatory, but if it saves one child from suffering, then to me it’s worth it.
