(BPAS, n.d.)
Fertility has always been an international issue demanding tools that are near unattainable. In the US alone, 40% of women in the reproductive age range (late teens to forties) have limited or no access to fertility clinics and reproductive technologies (Sifferlin, 2017). Now, due to the current pandemic, it’s even harder to access clinics (Collier, 2020). However, the UK has plans to open its first non-profit fertility clinic by the end of this year in the heart of London (Partos, 2021).
Although the National Health Service already offers free health services, fertility treatments like IVFs are limited by factors such as the mother’s financial status and relationships (Greep, 2020). The clinic, run by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), hopes to solve these problems by only charging the raw costs of treatment rather than having to meet certain criteria in order to receive care. “We’ll make sure that [the clinic’s] website and [...] information caters for all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and identities, because that’s something that has come across as lacking in some of the provision currently out there,” said BPAS’ director of embryology Marta Jansa Perez, who has received fertility treatment in the past.
For now, let’s hope that 2021 will lead us to a brighter future. With the opening of the BPAS’ clinic to provide indiscriminate fertility care for people across the UK, it seems things are getting just a little better. For now, we’ll just have to do our best against what life throws at us.
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