Quebec’s IVF restrictions: Economics or ethics?

Last week, Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette tabled a bill that, if passed, will prohibit women over the age of 42 from having access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). While the purpose of the bill, on the surface at least, is to lessen financial strain on the health care system, this particular section of the bill will achieve a different outcome; it will reduce the number of births to Quebec women who rely on the use of donated eggs to conceive.

Quebec started providing medicare for assistive reproductive technologies (ART) in 2010 in the hope of achieving three objectives: reduce health care costs resulting from multiple births; enable infertile couples to have children; and increase the number of births in the province by between 1,000 and 1,500 per year.

Despite claims that the program has been widely abused, the number of births to Quebec woman has only fallen since...