Convenient children.(Children on Demand: The Ethics of Defying Nature)(Book review)

Children on Demand: The Ethics of Defying Nature

by Tom Frame;

UNSW Press, 2008, $32.95.

As I WRITE THIS it is the thirtieth anniversary of the birth of Louise Brown, the world's first successfully conceived IVF baby. The IVF process has made many couples very happy; about 40 per cent of IVF attempts lead to the birth of a child. However, a similar percentage of these children show some kind of (perhaps minor) disability. This latter may be due, not to the IVF process, but to factors such as parents' ages and genetics. The process is also quite expensive, amounting to about $2000 for each attempt.

In the most straightforward cases, the mother is given hormone injections, causing ovulation so that the harvested ova may be fertilised by the father's semen. Originally, two or more such gametes were implanted in the mother's uterus, often leading to joyful but somewhat overwhelming multiple births, a save, I guess, on having to repeat the process, with all its emotional and financial considerations.

In his thoughtful examination of parenting, Children on Demand, Tom Frame discusses all methods of achieving parenthood in our times and questions the modem demand to be a parent. His first and last argument is: what is good for the child; and he concludes that, on all available evidence, the arrangement of "two parents living together ... has proved consistently better for children than any other, without exception". By two parents he wishes to make it clear that the two best parents are the biological mother and father of the child.

IVF does not mean that the resulting children, however artificially engendered, will not be part of a loving family, but Frame argues strongly for natural processes and acceptance of the cards nature has dealt: "A person's ultimate worth is not determined by their ability to parent." He sees all sorts of social, family and peer pressure operating in making a couple, or even a single adult, or those in a gay relationship, seek to have a child.