Infertility
The power of storytelling
Last year, during lockdown, I did a short online course in oral storytelling. Stories do indeed have a power and appeal of their own, and I’ve personally gained confidence and courage as I’ve used the techniques I learned in various contexts since.
So I was delighted to find a collection of stories told in a fascinating way and used to make important points. It was while listening to an online talk given by philosopher/sociologist/theologian Elaine Storkey, that I heard her reference one of her own books: Women in a Patriarchal World, and I was intrigued enough to order a copy. I expected it to be deeply erudite and scholarly and a one-chapter-at-a-time kind of volume. Not a bit of it! It’s based on her erudition certainly, but presented in a light and eminently accessible form.
Her initial statement, instantly got me – a fellow storyteller – on side:
Storytelling is a powerful form of communication.
Wahey. Tick.
At the very least, it presents us with characters, a location and a plot and invites us to listen in.
I’m listening …
Good storytelling goes much further.
Go on …
It opens up the shared humanity of others so that we get inside their life situation, travel with them and learn from their experiences.
And that’s exactly what her ‘good storytelling’ does. In twenty five chapters she tells the stories of women in the patriarchal world of Bible times – the midwives in the time of Moses, the five daughters of Zelophehad, Rahab the prostitute, Deborah the prophetess, the wise woman of Abel Beth Maakah, Huldah the prophetess, Lydia, Priscilla, Euodia and Syntyche, to name but a few. From these stories she draws out compelling lessons for us today; lessons that challenge us to see the issues of our own time, and think about what we could do to alleviate suffering, right wrongs, make the world a safer and kinder place. Every chapter, every story, has a section bringing important issues right up to date – Facing our challenges today, followed by a couple of Questions to ponder.
And those twenty-first century challenges include a wide range of big issues like leadership, oppression, injustice, commitment, resisting wrong, prostitution, nationalism, life and death decision making, morality, risk-taking, infertility, conflict resolution, safeguarding of children, whistle-blowing, climate change, empowerment of women. Impressive, huh?
But also disturbing stuff. What exactly am I doing to address the problems that beset our nation, our world, our time? And where I do ‘dabble’, how can I be more effective?
This writer is indeed a powerful storyteller. She’s also a strong example of someone who lives what she teaches. Multi-talented, esteemed and productive, but with a humility borne of her own deep faith.
Surrogacy
It’s now sixteen years since my novel about surrogate pregnancy, Double Trouble, was published. Sixteen years!! But the issues are still swirling around.
Surrogacy is banned in most countries in Europe, but it’s perfectly legal and permissible in the UK, provided the surrogate gives the service free of charge. She may ask for expenses, but not money for carrying the child. Seems there are an astonishing number of Apps and agencies linking surrogates with intended parents, underlining the frequency with which these arrangements are made. Who knew?
So hats off to the BBC who’ve produced a three episode series, The Surrogates, following five surrogacy arrangements in this country. Infertile, homosexual and single people, desperate to be parents, take this route to fulfil their dearest dreams, some using their own genetic material, some employing donor gametes. Young fertile mothers put themselves forward to carry babies for them, and they are the ones in the driving seat when it comes to choosing the intending parents with whom to form a working team. Social events, as well as online links, enable both parties to introduce themselves to each other, and establish rapport and relationships.
We were given the merest glimpse into the complex array of questions about the process and potential issues, however. Things like,
How many times are you prepared to try with this person?
What would you do if the child has disabilities?
Do you, the surrogate, want to have a continuing relationship with the child?
How do you feel about giving up the baby to a relative stranger?
What would happen if you, the surrogate, change your mind about handing the baby over?
How does your (the surrogate’s) partner/spouse feel about everything?
How intimately is the intended father to be involved in the actual processes of fertilisation, pregnancy and birth?
And so much more.
Some dilemmas were evident, though not spelled out. Seeing a young man climb into a water-bath with a completely naked woman not his partner while she delivers a baby, in itself raises all sorts of questions. Watching the play of emotions on the face of a husband as his wife embraces another man at intimate moments of reproduction, brings so many doubts to the fore. Hearing of a partner walking away because he can’t cope with the fallout of what he once saw as an heroic gesture, is traumatic. Being ‘rejected’ for the key role can resurrect deep-seated problems with self esteem. Exactly what does this level of sharing of an intensely intimate and private series of acts, do to relationships and bonds and families?
It’s only retrospectively one can say if such a transaction has been a wise decision. But it’s something every person contemplating being involved in a surrogate pregnancy must delve into deeply and honestly, and this series is a very useful launching pad. Happily, of course, not all such processes must take place under the glare of spotlights and cameras. These were very courageous souls.
Justice, rights, entitlement
The latest casualty of the coronavirus lockdown in this country is fertility care. As of Wednesday of this week, no new patients will be accepted, and even those in mid-treatment, those for whom this is their last hope, those who will be too old to qualify or stand a chance of success by the end of lockdown, will not now receive the necessary procedures towards which they’ve been working for so long. Yet another tragedy. More heartbreak. More hopelessness.
Which brings my thoughts to the ethical issues around assisted conception …
It’s now fifteen years since I wrote Double Trouble, a book about surrogate pregnancy. Fifteen years! Yoiks. But as with so many ethical dilemmas in medicine, the issues are still relevant today.
I was fascinated then, to watch the serialised BBC1 drama, The Nest, which finished this week, about a very wealthy but childless couple, Glasgow property tycoon Dan and his beautiful pampered wife Emily, who decide to go down this route. Click on the picture for the official trailer.
All attempts at IVF have proved unsuccessful. Dan’s sister has already tried to carry a baby for them but miscarried. They have one precious embryo left. One. Only one more chance. Emily meets the troubled teenage Kaya when she accidentally knocks into her in her car. Kaya sees an opportunity to get out of her impoverished life, and offers to be a surrogate for them in return for £50K. But as the story unravels we find that Kaya has secrets in her past and a very dubious pedigree indeed …; the would-be father Dan is something of a rough diamond too, dealing with a lot of shady characters and skullduggery …; Emily is single-minded about motherhood and what she wants, but privately troubled by the morality of what they are doing – always setting herself up as ‘the principled one‘ according to her sister-in-law. No-one in the UK will implant the last embryo. However, the Dochertys can well afford to go abroad for the simple procedure, and they do so.
On the face of it everyone stands to win. Kaya will be set on her dreamed-of pathway to becoming a successful business woman, able to ‘go on a plane, have one of these pull-along cases‘. The wealthy couple get their hearts’ desire. Better yet, surrogate and intended parents establish a relationship, even friendship. Kaya moves in with the Dochertys and gets a taste of a life of privilege. The baby will not only be much wanted, but will have every advantage money can buy.
Naturally – this is, after all, fiction, drama, a series requiring cliff hangers – things go pear-shaped. Relationships get confused. Loyalties are divided. Dubious and unsavoury motives emerge. But the underlying questions and challenges remain pertinent.
Is parenthood a right?
Is ‘want’ the same as ‘need’ in childbirth terms?
Payment for this service in the UK is forbidden. Should it be?
How binding should a contract between intending parents and surrogate be?
Should private arrangements for surrogacy be permitted?
Does a woman have the right to do whatever she likes with her own body?
What constitutes ‘reasonable expenses’?
Should those with the wherewithal be allowed to circumvent ethical and medical guidelines?
Does using someone far less powerful in this way constitute exploitation?
In the event of a dispute about whose baby it is, whose rights should take precedence, and who should decide?
What if the child is damaged/imperfect/not what was expected? Should the contract still stand? Who should accept responsibility for him/her?
What of the baby’s rights?
How much of its origins should a child be told?
Back to the drama … enter Kaya’s long-estranged mother, who encourages her to renege on the contract, hang on to the baby, become a mother herself, a better mother than she has been. But Dan already loves this child. Even when he finds out she is not his genetically, she’s still his daughter in his heart. The Dochertys call in their lawyer; the case goes to court. It’s left to the judge in the Family Court to put things into perspective – severely castigating their self-serving recklessness, the complete imbalance of power, the undesirable qualities on both sides. But, she says, at the end of the day it’s not a question of how she would judge them; it’s about what is in the baby’s best interests.
Contrary to expectation, there is a happy ending to this story, and both sides demonstrate they’ve learned important lessons about what matters in life. But the drama perfectly illustrates the power of fiction to challenge us to think about what society today should endorse, and how far the law can go in dealing with the fine nuances of moral questions in assisted reproduction. Well done, screenwriter Nicole Taylor.
The Handmaid’s Tale
Dare I confess to watching a TV adaptation before reading the book? Tut, tut, tut. I know, I know. I should have found the time to read it first, but, hey, I didn’t. Well, the subject matter appealed and my tbr pile is already threatening to topple over so what choice did I have?
The title in question? The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood and published in 1985. It’s an iconic novel, sold in its millions, never out of print, and it’s just caught the eye of the multitudes again. Sales of the book are reputed to be up 880% on last year! I can believe it.
Because the tale has just been serialised over the past ten Sunday evenings on Channel 4 and much hyped.
So was it all it was cracked up to be? Well, it’s a dystopian near-future look at an American community in a place called Gilead run along fundamentalist puritan religious lines. Pollution has rendered millions of women sterile, and officials are assigning fertile young ones to the high-ranking men – known as commanders – to bear them children. These brainwashed nubile females are all dressed alike in all-enveloping russet red habits and starched white wimpoles. Everyone is obsessed by one thing: conception. It hangs over everything; creeps into every exchange. From the robotically repeat greetings – Praise be; Blessed be the fruit; May the Lord open – to the common knowledge of the girls’ optimal fertility days.
But in spite of their unique value to the community, the handmaids themselves are hedged about with prohibitions, so repressed that they are even named as possessions of the commanders. Offred (literally ‘of-Fred’) is the narrator (played by Elisabeth Moss), and we are party to her rebellious thoughts as she goes through the motions of sexual servitude.
The act of impregnation in Gilead is known as The Ceremony. It takes the form of a sort of carefully ritualised threesome with the commander methodically doing his best to ejaculate into the handmaid at the lower end of the bed (state-sanctioned rape in essence) at one remove from his wife who cradles the handmaid’s head in her lap and watches the action apparently impassively from the other end. All based on the Old Testament account of Bilhah Rachel’s handmaid bearing children for Jacob ‘between the knees’ of her barren mistress.
And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.
And Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?
And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.
And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her.
And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son.
And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son: therefore called she his name Dan. (Genesis 30 vv1-6)
A taser-wielding, severe ‘Aunt Lydia’ keeps the coven of girls in subservience and trains them in their role, meting out dracronian punishments one minute, shedding hot tears for the girls she protects the next; and the legal wives ensure the handmaids definitely don’t get ideas above their station. They have one purpose and one purpose alone – as baby incubators for the ruling elite. Even a failure to conceive warrants horrible repercussions. And given the high likelihood that the commander is himself sterile, and the certainty that his wife is, it’s particularly hard to swallow. The tension is palpable, and only increased when the commander sends for one of them, or someone looks at them suggestively, or betrays an illicit emotion. The penalties for stepping out of line are barbaric – torture, eyes gouged out, beatings, hands hacked off, stoning, genital mutilation, even death by hanging or radiation sickness. Small wonder perhaps that the handmaids, with so much emotion suppressed, the victims of so much injustice, turn into raving vengeful murderers when they are licensed to punish a rapist. Making their later loyalty to each other when they have a collective opportunity to punish one of their own the more poignant.
And outside these baby-making homes, ominous black figures lurk and patrol, black cars with blackened windows glide into strategic positions, and the black shadow of something sinister hovers. Who can be trusted? Who is really in control?
It’s compulsive viewing although the violence and inhumanity in places left me feeling quite disturbed. And the horror of what’s really going on strikes forcibly when ‘Gilead’s children’ are paraded in front of a foreign delegation to demonstrate the effectiveness of this whole arrangement. I won’t spoil it by revealing more.
At once sobering and challenging but eerily perhaps, less unbelievable right now than in 1985 when Attwood dreamed it up. Why?
Because there are echoes of such a scenario in the news this past week in real life: reports of seriously diminishing sperm counts (down c50% since the 70s) resulting from a variety of sources in our environment and lifestyles (chemicals, pesticides, stress, obesity, tight underpants); figures that come from studies tracking 40,000 men. Couple this with the modern trend towards waiting till women are in their 30s to start a family and you’re looking into a future that looks suspiciously like Gilead! Or does it?
And then there are the chilling similarities to the forced marriages and honour killings countenanced by certain rigidly fundamentalist communities in this country today … Shivers run up and down the spine watching dozens of hands reaching for stones …
Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the research reports, or the limits to real-life parallels, the lessons within the novel do challenge us today. Are we ‘too busy to stand against sin’? How far would we go to have a child? How much are we doing to protect our fertility, our race, human kind, our world? Difficult but relevant questions which make the story linger long after the credits have faded from the screen. Thanks, Margaret Atwood.
Giving up the Ghost
May, chez nous, is a month of concerted efforts to raise money for several charities close to my heart. I’m hoping to keep the new novel simmering gently, but plans are in hand for assorted foodie events and sales and door-to-door collecting and creating goods to sell, as well. The knitting needles are already clacking ten to the dozen, at the same time as I reduce the size of my tbr pile of books. Happy days!
I won’t bore you with the domestic saga but all you bookworms and thinkers might well be interested in the reading. First up was an autobiography which proved fascinating.
Hilary Mantell has become a household name: the only woman to win the Man Booker prize twice, a prolific writer, reputedly one of the greatest living literary authors. But she’s arrived at this reputation, this successful place, through much tribulation. Giving up the Ghost: a Memoir is her own story, written back in 2003, not ‘to solicit any special sympathy’, she says, after all, many other people have survived far worse and never committed anything to paper. Rather it was an attempt ‘to take charge of the story of my childhood and my childlessness’; to lay a few ghosts to rest – the ghosts of past relations, past mistakes, the ghosts of her own unborn children. It was never intended to tell her whole story, and it doesn’t.
As a youngster ‘Ilary’ was weighed down by the burdens of her Catholic indoctrination: ‘You grow up believing that you’re wrong and bad. And for me, because I took what I was told really seriously, it bred a very intense habit of introspection and self-examination and a terrible severity with myself. So that nothing was ever good enough. It’s like installing a policeman, and one moreover who keeps changing the law.’ Her whole world was distorted through the lens of a perpetual guilt that started within five minutes of each confession. However, she lost her belief in God at the age of 12, a circumstance which had it’s own repercussions, although to the dispassionate observer some of her adult hauntings seem uncannily like the metamorphoses of her childhood superstitions, simply in a different guise.
There was little money and few luxuries when she was growing up but her situation resonated for me: it wasn’t unusual in the post-war years. I too remember looking on with wonder and not a little fear at the early vacuum cleaner – a Hoover Constellation which I was led to believe would gobble me whole if I allowed the nozzle anywhere near my long hair. I too vividly recall the flexes and tubing on appliances more sticky tape than original casing, coaxing each appliance to survive way beyond its sell-by date.
Secondary education for Hilary at a ‘rather posh‘ convent school was perceived through a more cynical eye, nevertheless, tales of humiliating punishments for unknown crimes, physical and psychological abuse inflicted by teachers, make sobering reading in these days where teachers are chary of even comforting a distressed child lest their contact be misinterpreted and reported.
For a long time ‘Protestantism’ carried much baggage in her mind, but it’s clear she harboured a great number of other misapprehensions and misunderstandings too, not all related to religious indoctrination and mystery, and perhaps more a consequence of the prevalent practice of simply not explaining things to children, coupled with her vivid imagination. Once again I identify with all of this. For her as well as for me ‘council housing’ carried sinister undertones. Aged three, Hilary was ‘waiting to change into a boy. When I am four this will occur‘, and she was nine before life disabused her of this notion, at which time she plummeted from ‘hero to zero‘. Neither, she discovered, was she actually destined to form a band of knights errant, nor become a parish priest, nor be gassed if she didn’t attend school. She listened and overheard the adults but was forced to put her own construction on the meagre facts she gleaned.
Life was further complicated by the irregular arrangements within their household with her mother’s paramour, Jack, living under the same roof with the family. Hilary’s ‘childhood ended‘ (aged 11) in the autumn of 1963 when they moved to a semi-detached house in a different county, leaving her father behind, Jack now posing as her stepfather (although the relationship was not regularised through marriage), ‘the past and the future equally obscured by the smoke from my mother’s burning boats’. They now had a lawn, a rockery, an apple tree, new carpets … but another name. Nevertheless, their relocation didn’t stop new neighbours and school children taking a prurient interest in their private living arrangements, which Hilary resented greatly.
Even though her autobiography reveals a curious child with her fair share of scepticism, in many ways she remained a young woman of her time, and looking back she is amazed that she wasn’t more challenging; perhaps nowhere more so than in respect of her health. Even as a pre-teen she was never robust, but as time passed she was plagued with chronic and severe pain in many parts of her anatomy: ‘Miss Neverwell’ as she puts it. For years she was treated as psychiatrically ill, with devastating consequences. By the time she eventually diagnosed her own illness as endometriosis it was already so widespread and invasive that she was robbed of any chance of having children or ever recovering fully. Now she wonders why she didn’t insist doctors paid more attention to her complaints; back then ‘The proper attitude to doctors was humble gratitude; you cleaned the house before they arrived’. But the humiliation and shame of not being believed had a profound effect on her.
In spite of her frequent absences from school, she was clearly a very bright and able student, becoming head girl and entering law school. Once there, though, constant ill-health and an all-consuming passion for a young man changed the course of her life. They married while both still students, living in a hovel and close to the breadline. The marriage fell apart at one stage but some years later they re-married, and today she declares her worst fear is ‘losing my husband’, although curiously in the book she never gives him a name. His work as a geologist took them abroad for years – to Africa and Saudi Arabia – all rich fuel for Hilary’s active imagination and growing portfolio of writings.
Her body image was another ongoing issue for her. Following her diagnosis, a combination of medication and an underactive thyroid made her weight balloon. She went from being frail and skinny to being so large she had to move into ‘loose covers rather than frocks’. This affected not only her own behaviour – ‘When you get fat, you get a new personality’ – but also that of others – ‘When I was thin and quick on my feet, a girl with a head of blonde hair, I went for weeks without a kind word. But why would I need one? When I grew fat, I was assumed to be placid. I was the same strung-out fired-up person I’d always been, but to the outward eye I had acquired serenity. A whole range of maternal virtues were ascribed to me.’
Like many before her, Mantell was not always the hugely successful writer she is today. Publishers rejected her manuscripts – how sick they must be in hindsight! But perhaps the most surprising thing for me, reading her autobiographical account, is that she is addicted to colons and semi-colons, using them with an extravagance and abandon I have never seen elsewhere; I counted ten within two paragraphs early on in the book! A tutor on a creative writing course would make short shrift of that kind of obsession, but when you’re a writer of Mantell’s stature it seems it can become part of your signature.
On with the next ball of mohair! And the next book.
Life interrupted
Boy, what a sweltering July! Record-breaking stuff. The lawns are already brown but the flowers seem to be thriving …
A good time to be out and about ‘on holiday’ with the children rather than indoors trying to work. Water has featured rather a lot to keep everyone’s temperature under control …animals provided a happy distraction …and some daringly fast travel generated a welcome breeze …Being in loco parentis to two of my grandchildren for a couple of weeks reminds me of how much effort goes into encouraging youngsters to be courteous, well-mannered and decent little people. We all want to be able to take them out into polite society and not be humiliated or embarrassed, don’t we? It’s not a big ask.
So what would you do if one of yours make rude gestures, or shouted obscenities at complete strangers in shops? Or let out wild shrieks and blasphemy in a tranquil church? Or abused themselves in public places? What would you think of the parents if you were simply a witness to such behaviour?
No, I’m not describing life chez nous this past fortnight; my own personal experience of such things is limited to that of a passing stranger. But I’ve watched documentaries on the subject, and seen something of the horror for families dealing with compulsive swearing, shouting and antisocial behaviours. Somehow though, up to now my sympathy has been largely with the parents. I couldn’t imagine ever going anywhere with a child who screamed profanities or simply had to tap a door sixteen times, twenty-nine times a day. Or did antisocial things in public places.
My latest discovery, Life, Interrupted by James McConnel, is therefore, an instructive read, although I should probably add a caveat: it might offend the sensibilities of some. It tells the autobiographical story of award-winning composer, James, who started to twitch and sniff compulsively when he was six, and lived with increasing forceful and obsessive behaviours until he was eventually diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome at the age of thirty-two. (Hard to believe no one identified his problem earlier; his symptoms were classic.)
Now, I might as well confess from the outset, that I needed to hear this message for very personal reasons. I have a very low level of tolerance for perfectly ordinary nervous tics and repetitive actions – even harmless ones like squeaking shoes, sniffing, picking spots/nail/ears, flicking the pages of a book/end of a pen … I’m not proud of this failing; but it’s inbuilt and inherited, and it’s something I’ve had to live with all my long-legged life. The endless repetition drives me nutty inside; I’ve learned for the most part not to show my irritation on the outside – I think! And hope.
So I’m hugely admiring of the parents, nanny, teachers and fellow students, and girlfriends who managed to overlook the plethora of jerks, sounds and compulsive behaviours that James exhibits – the good and kindly ones at least. There are plenty of boys at his boarding school, similarly bound for Eton, who are merciless to the point of cruelty. And wherever he goes James himself harbours this deep sense that he doesn’t quite fit; he’s a ‘nearly person’. He repeatedly ‘fails’, adding each time to his growing sense of disappointment and rejection. He has no idea how to engage in normal social interchange with his peers; he simply can’t omit any of his rituals in order to get to a seminar on time; he finds it impossible to see past his obsession about the symmetry and rightness of words and numbers to answer exam questions.
Life, Interrupted, though, gave me a better sense of the stranglehold this condition has on the person himself, the premonitory urges he has to fight every single day, the aftermath and consequences of each outburst, the impotence he feels in the face of this compulsion.
James calls his nemesis ‘the Controller‘, and later ‘the Beast‘, and it’s small wonder that he seeks refuge from its pernicious influence in the two things that tame it: music and alcohol. The first soothes it, the second deadens it.
For him it’s more than the occasional shouted expletive or violent jerking; it’s a whole range of feelings which he must constantly fight against or appease:
‘I have this terrible urge to crush boxes of vibrating eggs, touch fridges, check under the bed for men in blue coats, check in lavatories for arse-pecking birds, smash glasses, count baked bean slogans, tap light switches, copy things people say, hold my breath until it hurts, jump off ski-lifts, smash teapots, jerk my leg, arm and neck, sniff almost everything, cough, make faces and grunt like a pig.’
James is an exceptionally gifted musician who studied flute, organ and composition at the Royal College of Music in London, but even here the Tourette’s threatened his success. Only when he was helped to understand his condition, to give it a medical name, and to make an informed choice on its management, did he start to take proper control of his life and career. Since then he has gone on to write hundreds of scores for the theatre, musicals, documentaries and dramas. What a triumph over adversity. His nemesis has become ‘the Brat‘, much more benign and less controlling.
A sobering read especially for an intolerant person like me.
This one (though non-fiction) joins the list that includes Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Jodi Picoult’s House Rules (featuring protagonists with autism); Lisa Genova’s Still Alice (dementia); Ben Elton’s Inconceivable (infertility), etc. All easy enjoyable reads that have helped me develop that little bit of extra sensitivity, understanding and tolerance. Which as you know, is my own aim as a novelist.
Now, back to full time grandparenthood … It’s the turn of the older two children this time, and they start off with more normal temperatures.
IVF – a luxury or a right?
It’s odd how when your mind is steeped in a particular subject you see related things everywhere, isn’t it?
As part of preparing for the publication of Saving Sebastian I’ve been thinking a lot about fertility treatments, the rights and wrongs, benefits and risks, should we-shouldn’t we? Because as well as working on the book itself, I’ve had to bend my mind to the assorted peripheral tasks that dog any writer – publicity and marketing, updating my website, events, that sort of thing. Not nearly as much fun as the creative writing but just as necessary, I’m afraid. Anyway, I was deep into drafting questions for bookclubs, and challenges for teachers and students of related subjects, when lo and behold, two articles jumped out at me.
One was a news item saying that a Brazilian fertility expert – the very one who helped the famous footballer, Pelé, become the father of twins – is suspected of having deceived patients at his Sao Paulo clinic into raising children who were not biologically their own by implanting other couples’ embryos to boost his success rates. Wow!
And why did this leap out and sock me between the eyes? Because in Saving Sebastian, a Nigerian couple have twins through IVF – one black, the other coffee coloured – and there’s a big old stooshie going on in the fertility centre to establish just what went wrong. Was it deliberate? Was it a genuine mistake? Is there something else lurking in the undergrowth? Too bad real life beat me to it, eh? If my publisher had stuck to the original publication date of 1 May my novel would have been out a fortnight before this Brazilian story broke. Heigh-ho.
The other sucker-punch was by Daily Telegraph columnist, Dr Max Pemberton (16 May). He starts by saying he thought long and hard before writing this particular article because he knew he’d attract condemnation. OK, I’m listening, Doc. The gist of his argument – please note his not necessarily mine (I want to keep my powder dry meantime!) is
– the NHS is strapped for cash
– hard decisions have to be made about how to use limited resources
– there is now an expectation that the NHS will provide fertility treatment on demand and the belief that everyone has a right to be a parent
– childlessness is not a disease but a grief based on people being unable to have what they want
– in these straightened times life-threatening and debilitating diseases should take precedence
– therefore, he concludes, ‘IVF is a luxury the NHS just cannot afford‘.
And the relevance of this piece? Well, in Saving Sebstian, Yasmeen and Karim Zair are fighting to have a baby by IVF who is the same tissue type as their son, Sebastian. The little lad has a rare blood disorder from which he will die if he doesn’t get stem cells from a saviour sibling. And already he’s having punishing treatment to keep him alive. At four years of age … imagine! Should they be allowed to have this treatment? There are plenty of people opposing them. What do you think?
Maybe reading the book will help to crystallise your own thinking so you can agree or disagree with Max Pemberton more logically. But in the meantime please do have your say on my blog if your dander is up, steam is exploding out of your ears, and you feel like adding to the debate right now! You can always publish an addendum or a retraction later. Remember …
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind (William Blake).