Abstract
Social work services for persons undergoing the in vitro fertilization process(IVF) has greatly lagged behind the medical technology opportunities provided to these clients. Advocacy for social work services for persons undergoing IVF was advanced upon the procedure’s initial development, but there has been a stark lack of recent scholarship regarding social work in fertility health services. The existing literature suggests several talking points regarding the IVF process to be discussed with persons considering IVF, especially the medical and psychological risks of failure. This article discusses a newer and necessary topic to cover in pre-IVF counseling: the possibility of too much success in the form of excess embryos. Although the topic must be covered with sensitivity to the relatively low rate of IVF success, persons receiving care through assisted reproductivetechnology (ART) need to be prepared for the difficult moral questions raised when IVF procedures result in even more embryos than intended. Social workers need to be prepared to explore the pros and cons of each disposition option with IVF clients.
Highlights
Social work services for persons undergoing the in vitro fertilization process (IVF) has greatly lagged behind the medical technology opportunities provided to these clients
IVF success rates have been improving, the success rate per cycle still stands at 32.7% (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2017)
The authors present a brief overview of IVF and cryopreservation, an overview of the literature on social work involvement in reproductive services, and an examination of the disposition options for spare embryos, including the pros and cons of each option
Summary
For most of human history, there was essentially one way to create a child that involved two persons of the opposite gender; the opportunities for conception have evolved rapidly since the 1970s with the development of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). In July 1978, the first baby produced from IVF procedures was born in England. Her parents named her Louise Brown, but she is famously known as the first “test tube baby” The use of IVF doubled between 2000 and 2010, with 1% of all infants born in the United States in 2010 as a result of IVF (CDC, 2012). According to the CDC (2017), of the 231,936 ART cycles performed in 2015, 60,778 resulted in live births and a total of 72,913 infants; approximately 1.6% of all infants born in 2015 in the United States were conceived using IVF. 45,779 procedures were banking cycles that resulted in eggs or embryos frozen for future use (CDC, 2017)
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