Fertility and Sterility, a journal of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, published findings from an infertility study sent to directors of 369 clinics or doctors’ offices that offer reproductive medicine services; 210 responded. Here are some of the results, released January 18, 2005:
- One in 10 American couples is infertile.
- About 100,000 pregnancy attempts are made each year using in vitro fertilization (IVF), in which eggs and sperm are mixed in a lab dish and the resulting embryos are implanted in the womb.
- More than 177,000 babies have been born through IVF in the United States.
The clinic directors were asked a series of hypothetical questions about who they would help get pregnant:
- The clinics surveyed turn away 4 percent of potential clients each year
- 28 percent of the clinics surveyed have formal policies specifying who they would accept or deny
- 80 percent of the clinics require clients to meet with financial coordinators
- 18 percent of the clinics require clients to see a social worker or psychologist
- Most of the clinics said they would help a 43-year-old get pregnant
- One in five would refuse single women
- 5 percent don’t ask about marital status
- One in four would help a woman who has the AIDS virus, while 59 percent would refuse to treat a woman with HIV
- 3 percent would refuse a blind couple
- 1 percent would refuse Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do not believe in having blood transfusions that might be necessary
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I am very interested in the information that you have posted. I would love to use it as credible research for a project but I cannot find where you aquired your statistics from, and therefore am unable to use it. I think that what you are doing here is great, given that over population is a problem. We should make this world better for those already in it before we invest so much in using medicine to create new people.
If you look at the first line of my post, it cites the source where the statistics came from.