Having kids shouldn't be a luxury. It's time we cut the cost of IVF
But a story published in this masthead this week really drove home that for a growing number of Australians, there's one area of our lives where the path isn't always linear, especially financially, and that's the journey to parenthood.
News that a 32-year-old Melbourne man fathered 27 children by 15 different women via informal sperm donation was shocking, but illuminating. It revealed the growing number of people forgoing formal fertility routes such as IVF and choosing riskier options, in large part due to financial constraints.
According to the Australian and New Zealand Assisted Reproduction Database, about 20,000 babies are born via IVF each year, while egg freezing has increased by as much as 1567 per cent in Australia over the past decade.
In other words, this is a booming industry with no signs of slowing down. That in itself isn't inherently a bad thing. But we need to be realistic about the fact that it's a profit-driven industry worth over $6 billion, the process of IVF is prohibitively expensive, and people find themselves there when they are at their most vulnerable.
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Depending on where you live and the specialist you see, the average IVF cycle costs between $9000 and $15,000. You might get some of this back via Medicare rebates, but the out-of-pocket costs are substantial.
While some states like Victoria have begun rolling out IVF services via public healthcare, the wait times to see specialists are as long as two years. And as anyone who has had children, is thinking about one day having them, or is currently trying, knows: time is the cruel enemy of fertility. Hence, why most people will invariably end up in the private system.
For context, a healthy woman with no pre-existing conditions in her 20s has a 25 to 30 per cent chance of falling pregnant naturally, but this starts to decline throughout her late 20s and early 30s. Once she reaches 35, this decline becomes swift, and by the time she's 40, the chance of falling pregnant naturally is roughly 5 per cent.
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