Pro-Family Political Leaders and legislators: here is some low-hanging legislative fruit. Propose that your state standardize the reporting for all IVF
clinics in your state. The measure you want is Live Birth per Cycle Initiated. This proposal allow you to educate the public, including women who are
being misled by the industry. This proposal also allows you to take the moral high ground as a consumer protection advocate, in opposition to the fertility
industry, which really does take advantage of very vulnerable people.
You don’t want the number of pregnancies because not all pregnancies make it all the way to the birth of a live child. This is especially true with IVF
because the rates of miscarriages and still birth are higher than for naturally conceived children.
You also don’t want the number of “embryo transfers” as your baseline number. Not all women make it to the point of doing a successful embryo transfer
into the woman’s uterus. The woman may have difficulty at the stage of egg retrieval or fertilization for instance. Yet she has been through a cycle.
Her body and soul have taken some abuse. It is not fair for the clinics to exclude these women from their “success rates.”
This story quote a couple of IVF experts from Australia, but the point is the same everywhere. Women contemplating assisted reproduction have a right to know
the actual probability of success, for the amount of money and physical trauma she will experience per cycle.
Fertility clinic websites have a number of different ways of reporting success rates. For instance, clinics may report success rates in terms of pregnancy,
or they may report it in terms of live birth rate per embryo transfer.
IVF pioneer Alan Trounson said pregnancy rates were not helpful to the consumer, because some pregnancies were lost.
“What you need to know is the probability of having a baby, because you didn’t come in to get pregnant, you came in to have a baby,” he said.
On top of that, Professor Norman said clinics defined “pregnancy” differently in their website claims.
If you count a pregnancy at an earlier stage, or a later stage, the statistics change — and that also meant consumers could not make proper comparisons
between websites.
“There’s [a] big inconsistency,” Professor Norman said.
“You’ll find some clinics define pregnancy on the basis of an ultrasound.
“Others are included from 12 weeks onwards, so it’s a bit of a mess all over the place.”
Some clinics also present success rates in terms of live birth rate per embryo transfer.
But this does not reflect all those women who could not make it to the embryo transfer stage. If your eggs could not be retrieved, or fertilised, you are
not included in this statistic.
Also, see Dr. Norman’s “5 things to ask your fertility doctor.”