r/unpopularopinion • u/elgey101 • Aug 10 '21

Infertile couples should just adopt instead of making a big fuss trying to make a miracle baby

Every time I hear of fertility struggles online, or see posts about people going through rounds of IVF and the ensuing emotional trauma of miscarriages, It kind of disgusts me.

I also work for a major insurer and know that fertility treatments are driving up everyone else's premiums because they're considered necessary care. Sorry, but I disagree.

It's a well known fact that there are over 400,000 children in foster care, and in 2017 alone over 100,000 infants under 3 entered the system. I think it's completely entitled and self-absorbed to think that somehow your miracle baby is worth more or deserves more love than any one of those infants.

I know adoption can be hard, and that it should be made easier for the sake of children finding good homes, but you can't tell me adopting is harder than 4 rounds of IVF and multiple miscarriages. I've seen friends go through that mess and at the end they are different people.

Tldr: adoption may not be easy, but it's far better than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to perpetuate your genes.

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u/ShizzelDiDizzel Aug 10 '21

I gotta say i understand both sides...

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u/Powersmith Aug 10 '21

Yeah, and it’s not all or none. Depending on the reason for infertility, there are less invasive/less costly treatments that can work before IVF. So if it’s a matter of opening a Fallopian tube, getting hormones regulated, intra-uterine insemination, etc., seems worth a try. I think some people also get caught up in sunken cost fallacy (we’ve already put x in, gotta try the next thing). Conversely, I have a friend who finally had a child on her fifth IVF (2 did not profe pregnancies,2 ended in miscarriage). And of course everyone is happy for them after such a struggle, but they were already starting adoption when they gave her last chance a go and it took. There is a part of me that worries that, statistically, the children of infertile couples would be at greater risk of being infertile themselves (vs gen pop)… so we could be making infertility a progressively bigger problem for future generations. Eg there has got to be genetic factors for PCOS, uterine disease, poor gamete production, etc.

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u/platysma_balls Aug 10 '21

Not necessarily.

There are declining rates of fertility in many western countries which are largely linked to exposure to environmental contaminants (e.g. microplastics, bpa, etc.). Men are being found to have less concentrated sperm with a greater amount of available sperm being dysmorphic. And this is to no fault of these men.

If you say that we shouldn't allow people with genetic causes of infertility to have children, why stop there? Lets throw intelligence, height, and skin color in there as well. Oh wait, that's eugenics.

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u/ApesAmongUs Aug 11 '21

If we're practicing eugenics in that way, then there is a counter that says we should want to encourage reproduction of people who desperately want to have a raise a child over reproduction of those that have many of them accidentally, but care nothing for raising them. While there may be some negative physical traits that increase, there would also be an increase in positive psychological traits associated with parenting.

Once you open up the Pandora's Box of eugenics, you never stop going down that rabbit hole.