A Journey Through Infertility

- first, implement a nationwide social freezing program, where women in their 20s are offered to freeze their eggs at a young age for free. Such a large-scale program would probably also improve the tech and might make egg collection less intrusive.

- combined with this program, let the women who freeze their eggs opt-in into an egg donation program, where some of their eggs can be used by women with fertility problems

But as with many things fertility, seems that modern states simply do not have the capacity to seriously try anything. Who knows why that is.

- Capability. Many couples are perfectly capable of carrying a pregnancy, they’re just having trouble conceiving.

- Cost. Surrogacy in a lot of countries is very expensive compared to IVF. Where I live in the UK, IVF is free on the NHS, or ~£8,000-£10,000 a round privately. Surrogacy can be £20,000 to £100,000 (or more), depending on the arrangement.

- Legal issues. In the UK, for example, the surrogate mother is the legal mother of the child at birth.

- Availability. Finding a surrogate can be very hard, especially in countries where commercial surrogacy is illegal. People go use surrogates abroad instead, which has its own range of issues (read up on orphaned surrogate kids in Ukraine).

- Ethical barriers. Using a surrogate involves issues of bodily autonomy. You can’t stop your surrogate smoking or drinking while pregnant, for example.

- Emotional barriers. Emotionally, motherhood starts at conception. Most mothers do not want to skip those 9 months of bonding they have with their baby prior to it being born.