- Questions asked to a couple of a midwife and a gynecologist
When one speak about MAP, what comes to your mind ?
To be schematic : infertility / baby made in laboratory
Do you think that the MAP changes family models ?
Difficult question to answer… If we allow MAP to men or women couples, family models will be obviously changed…
In favor or against embryo donation ?
Rather against… Not many arguments come to our minds… In favor of adoption !
What do you think about the PIGD ?
The research on the embryo is useful within the couple for the detection of some serious genetic diseases. It allows to make a diagnostic and avoid the transmission of those disease to the descendants. Getting embryos is also sometimes done in the hope of treating a sick sibling. It is therefore necessary to supervise these researches to avoid all abuse.
Are you in favor of the gestational surrogacy ?
No ! It seems to us that it is an open door to all abuse. One does not lend his body. If we allow this, we will go further by accepting the scientific advances on the artificial womb, and more.
Do you think that the MAP should be paid back trough social benefits ?
The MAP is actually paid back in France : a couple can do 6 artificial insemination and 4 IVF fully reimbursed.
Infertility is not a disease, but it seems good for couples that this long journey is taken care of. This is quite a long and expensive process that not many couples could financially assume.
However, a reflection is to be developed for those who already have a child or children in their family, or recomposed families in which one member of the couple already has a child … Should we limit reimbursement only to childless couples ?
Would you say that the anonymity of gamete donors is a good thing?
Anonymity must be maintained.
Anonymity is beneficial to the unborn child and the parents who will raise him. This preserves the families of a possible search of the donor. This is not the solution to everything but removing the anonymity may create more problems than it could solve.
What laws and practices seem to you more or less acceptable abroad ? Do the French laws appear too restrictive to you ?
Example of Spain : the body has become a trade ! You do not buy a body for a baby at all costs ! The law seems almost too libertine there … For us, it seems that the French law is well supervised and limited enough.
What is your religion ? Does it influence your vision on MAP ?
We are both catholics.
The influence might be the living environment and the one in which we grew up and in which we change generally. So religion affects necessarily indirectly our view facing the MAP …
Finally, should the medicine answer to the desire for a child at all cost ?
No, no baby at all costs ! MAP has its limits, and we must not exceed them!
Cultural references
Theater
- Noémie Caillault in Maligne, a play directed by Morgan Perez. In this play, Noémie tells his story. She had breast cancer at age 27, and she evokes in this play this difficult period in his life in a comic way. During her journey, the freezing of oocytes by vitrification is going to be proposed, in order to conceive a child through IVF if ever chemotherapy destroys its reproductive cells.
Novels
- The uninhabited (L’inhabitée), a poignant novel about the desire of children and the prohibited maternity. The author, Maïa Brami, who herself suffers failures of MAP, sublime the pain related to the lack, to give birth to an intense literary text, intimate and rare, resolutely turned towards life.
- Infertility is generally an event perceived negatively by the women and society. In They want in child (Elles veulent un enfant), Muriel Flis-Trèves, psychoanalyst, recounts the suffering of these women and the challenges they face when they decide to make use of medically assisted procreation methods.
- A baby but not at any price (Un bébé mais pas à tout prix), of Fanny Brigitte Cohen. The journalist explains his entire MAP process. Having only a phlegm problem but having a very strong desire of child, she agreed to AI and IVF messy, but nothing worked. She tells the lack of humanity encountered among doctors, laboratories, hospitals and clinics, being only a number and a uterus. She also tells how doctors hide the side effects to the treated women and she gives some examples. She criticizes the systematic use of MAP when for her at the end, a simple pill was enough.
Films
- A mad desire (Une folle envie), by Bernard Jeanjean. This is the story of a couple, their journey to have a child, which leads them to the MAP. The couple is facing all the difficulties of the MAP : the relationship with family and friends, the questions, the relationship between the couple.
- Starbuck, by Ken Scott. This is a very good movie about the difficulties of gamete donations, at the same time for children, and for the "father" who discovers all these children and try beyond that to have a normal life.
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