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Test-tube babies break records in US
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More test-tube babies were born in the United States in 2012 than ever before, and they constituted a higher percentage of total births than at any time since the technology was introduced in the 1980s, according to a report from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART), an organization of medical professionals.
SART’s 379 member clinics, which represent more than 90 percent of infertility clinics in the US, reported that in 2012 they performed 165,172 procedures involving in vitro fertilization (IVF), in which an egg from the mother-to-be or a donor is fertilized in a lab dish. They resulted in the birth of 61,740 babies.
That was about 2,000 more IVF babies than in 2011. With about 3.9 million babies born in the United States in 2012, the IVF newborns accounted for just over 1.5 percent of the total, more than ever before.
The growing percentage reflects, in part, the increasing average age at which women give birth, since fertility problems become more common as people age. The average age of first-time mothers is now about 26 years. In 1970 it was 21.4.
Although the rising number of test-tube babies suggests the technology has become mainstream, critics of IVF point out that the numbers mask wide disparities.
“It’s important for people to understand that women over 35 have the highest percentage of failures,” said Miriam Zoll, author of the 2013 book “Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility and the Pursuit of High Tech Babies.”
Earlier SART data showed that the percentage of attempts that result in live births is 10 times higher in women under 35 than in women over 42. And in the older women fewer than half the IVF pregnancies result in a live birth.
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