Potterville:

Donald Trump said Thursday he would have the government or insurance companies cover the cost of in-vitro fertilization for “all Americans who need it” in a second term — although he declined to say how he would pay for it.

Reproductive rights have been a major vulnerablity for the Republican White House nominee ever since the Supreme Court gutted federal protections for abortion access in 2022.

Trump’s weakness was further exacerbated after an Alabama court ruled in February that frozen embryos created via IVF should be considered children.

Trump said he supported IVF after several clinics paused their care following the Alabama decision.

“I’m announcing today in a major statement that, under the Trump administration, your government will pay for — or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for — all costs associated with IVF treatment,” he told a rally in Potterville, Michigan.

He offered no detail on how his proposal would work, including how it would be funded, but when the announcement was previewed in an interview with NBC ahead of the event, Trump said one option would be to have insurance companies pay “under a mandate.”

Experts say the 2022 US Supreme Court ruling effectively granted states the final say on questions of personhood, paving the way for wide-reaching impacts on other areas of reproductive health, including IVF.

Few Americans have insurance plans that cover fertility treatments in any case, with costs of $20,000 or more for a single, 18-month round of IVF treatment too expensive for many.

The ex-president added that under a second Trump term, new parents would be able to deduct “major newborn expenses” from their tax bill, proclaiming that “we’re pro-family.”

Although his support for IVF has been consistent since the February ruling, Trump claimed numerous ideological positions on abortion before settling on his current view that the legalities around the procedure should be up to the states.

He told NBC News in 1999 he was “very pro-choice” before announcing he was “pro-life” in 2011 and that women who seek abortions should get “some form of punishment” in 2016.

Trump has taken credit for installing the Supreme Court justices who struck down federal abortion rights, and signaled Thursday how he may vote in a Florida referendum this fall which seeks to reverse his home state’s six-week ban.

“I want more than six weeks,” he told the Daily Mail. “I think six weeks is a mistake. And I’ll be expressing that soon, but I want more than six weeks.”

Trump and his election rival, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, are campaigning in swing states this week as they embark on the most intense phase of the campaign.

Harris, rallying in Savannah, Georgia, told supporters Trump would sign a national abortion ban into law if he won.

“Ours is a fight for the future. And it is a fight for freedom. Like the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body, and not have her government tell her what to do,” she said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Wellington:

We hear a lot about women’s biological clock and how age affects the chance of pregnancy.

New research shows men’s fertility is also affected by age. When dads are over 50, the risk of pregnancy complications increases.

Data from more than 46 million births in the United States between 2011 and 2022 compared fathers in their 30s with fathers in their 50s.

While taking into account the age of the mother and other factors known to affect pregnancy outcomes, the researchers found every ten-year increase in paternal age was linked to more complications.

The researchers found that compared to couples where the father was aged 30–39, for couples where the dad was in his 50s, there was a:

• 16% increased risk of preterm birth
• 14% increased risk of low birth weight
• 13% increase in gestational diabetes.

The older fathers were also twice as likely to have used assisted reproductive technology, including IVF, to conceive than their younger counterparts.

Dads are getting older

In this US study, the mean age of all fathers increased from 30.8 years in 2011 to 32.1 years in 2022.

In that same period, the proportion of men aged 50 years or older fathering a child increased from 1.1% to 1.3%.

We don’t know the proportion of men over 50 years who father children in Australia, but data shows the average age of fathers has increased.

In 1975 the median age of Australian dads was 28.6 years. This jumped to 33.7 years in 2022.

How male age affects getting pregnant

As we know from media reports of celebrity dads, men produce sperm from puberty throughout life and can father children well into old age.

However, there is a noticeable decline in sperm quality from about age 40.

Female partners of older men take longer to achieve pregnancy than those with younger partners.

A study of the effect of male age on time to pregnancy showed women with male partners aged 45 or older were almost five times more likely to take more than a year to conceive compared to those with partners aged 25 or under. More than three quarters (76.8%) of men under the age of 25 years impregnated their female partners within six months, compared with just over half (52.9%) of men over the age of 45.

Pooled data from ten studies showed that partners of older men are also more likely to experience miscarriage. Compared to couples where the male was aged 25 to 29 years, paternal age over 45 years increased the risk of miscarriage by 43%.

Older men are more likely to need IVF

Outcomes of assisted reproductive technology, such as IVF, are also influenced by the age of the male partner.

A review of studies in couples using assisted reproductive technologies found paternal age under 40 years reduced the risk of miscarriage by about 25% compared to couples with men aged over 40.

Having a male under 40 years also almost doubled the chance of a live birth per treatment cycle. With a man over 40, 17.6% of treatment rounds resulted in a live birth, compared to 28.4% when the male was under 40.

How does male age affect the health outcomes of children?

As a result of age-related changes in sperm DNA, the children of older fathers have increased risk of a number of conditions. Autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and leukaemia have been linked to the father’s advanced years.

A review of studies assessing the impact of advanced paternal age reported that children of older fathers have increased rates of psychiatric disease and behavioural impairments.

But while the increased risk of adverse health outcomes linked to older paternal age is real, the magnitude of the effect is modest. It’s important to remember that an increase in a very small risk is still a small risk and most children of older fathers are born healthy and develop well.

Improving your health can improve your fertility

In addition to the effects of older age, some chronic conditions that affect fertility and reproductive outcomes become more common as men get older. They include obesity and diabetes which affect sperm quality by lowering testosterone levels.

While we can’t change our age, some lifestyle factors that increase the risk of pregnancy complications and reduce fertility, can be tackled. They include:

Get the facts about the male biological clock

Research shows men want children as much as women do. And most men want at least two children.

Yet most men lack knowledge about the limitations of female and male fertility and overestimate the chance of getting pregnant, with and without assisted reproductive technologies.

We need better public education, starting at school, to improve awareness of the impact of male and female age on reproductive outcomes and help people have healthy babies.

For men wanting to improve their chance of conceiving, the government-funded sites Healthy Male and Your Fertility are a good place to start. These offer evidence-based and accessible information about reproductive health, and tips to improve your reproductive health and give your children the best start in life.

(Author:Karin Hammarberg, Senior Research Fellow, Global and Women’s Health, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University)

(Disclosure Statement:Karin Hammarberg works for the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority which manages the Your Fertility program)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Sperm donated in the UK is being exported to other countries and can be used to create large numbers of children across the world, violating a strict 10-family limit that applies in the UK, experts warned. According to The Guardian, while a single donor can be used to create no more than 10 families in UK fertility clinics, there are no restrictions on sperm or eggs from the country being sent abroad. This legal loophole is being exploited in what appears to be an industrial-level practice. It also raises the prospect of some donor-conceived children navigating relationships with dozens of biological half-siblings across Europe and beyond. 

Amidst this, experts are calling on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to tighten restrictions. “If you believe that it’s necessary to enforce the 10-family limit in the modern world then logically that should apply wherever the sperm are from,” said Prof Jackson Kirkman-Brown, chair of the Association for Reproductive and Clinical Scientists (ARCS), per The Guardian. “There is data showing that some of the children who find the really big families struggle with that,” he added. 

Separately, speaking to the outlet, Prof Lucy Frith, of the University of Manchester, who is researching donor-conceived experiences, said that making contact with biological half-siblings is often viewed positively. However, she added that “when numbers of siblings began to grow [it] felt unmanageable to have contact and relationships with a growing and indeterminate number of people.” 

“There are no hard and fast figures of when the number becomes ‘too much’ and this depends on individuals, but generally over 10 was felt to be a large group,” she said. 

“Once you’ve frozen sperm it doesn’t get any older,” said Mr Kirkman-Brown. This means that a donor sperm could continue to be used for years or decades. “You can end up with donor siblings older than your parents, which is not somewhere we’ve been yet,” he added.

Donations are “presented to donors as a beautiful gift to help someone create a family, not as, ‘We’re going to maximise the number of births from your gametes and make as much money as we can from that,'” said Prof Nicky Hudson, a medical sociologist at De Montford University. 

The rule for enforcing the 10-family limit across licensed clinics is controlled by HEFA. According to the regulatory body, 10 is the number people feel comfortable with in terms of the number of potential donor-conceived children, half-siblings and families that might be created. 

“As the HFEA has no remit over donation outside of HFEA licensed clinics, there would be no monitoring of how many times a donor is used in these circumstances,” said Rachel Cutting, director of compliance and information at the HFEA.

Also Read | Humans Experience Fastest Aging At These Two Ages, Reveals Study

Experts are now asking HEFA to crack down. “The HFEA is limited by its statutory duties, but it could stipulate that it will only import gametes that meet the UK limit (10 families), outside the UK,” said Lucy Frith. 

“The HFEA’s position that this is outside its remit is not good enough,” said Sarah Norcross, director of the fertility charity Progress Educational Trust. “I’m not against there being more than 10 families if some are outside the UK, but 75, which some of these banks have alighted on, is a heck of a lot of relatives. Even if they say we can’t control the number of families abroad, they could insist that the number is made available to the recipient,” she added. 

Notably, according to The Guardian, the United Kingdom was an importer of sperm till five years ago, mainly from the US and Denmark. But between 2019 and 2021, the UK exported 7,542 straws of sperm. Additionally, the world’s largest sperm and egg bank Cryos opened a unit in Manchester this April.

“The European Sperm Bank, which accounted for 90% of exports, applies a worldwide limit of 75 families a donor and estimates that its donors help on average 25 families,” the report said. 

“The idea of a dad to loads of children already exists in our cultural imagination. We don’t have that for women,” noted Prof Nicky Hudson, adding that it’s not an idea encouraged by women. One of them told her it “felt like human trafficking”.