When Does the Pursuit of Pregnancy Go Too Far?

I understand, deeply, the primal call to bear a child.

I tried for more than a decade — starting at 29 — to get pregnant feeling at times like little more than a lab rat. Yet, it’s hard not to think we’re crossing into dangerous territory with headlines like ‘The three-parent baby trap — is new IVF technique safe?’ and ‘IVF will mostly be a lifestyle choice by 2050.’

Not surprisingly, the comments about IVF becoming “a normal non-coital method of having children” from Carl Djerassi, the chemist who helped develop the contraceptive pill, sparked outrage. The Telegraph columnist Bryony Gordon noted that such ideas “help to perpetuate a myth that leaves many thousands of people in despair every year — the myth that fertility can in some way be controlled, switched on and off or stored up for future use.”

Fertility ignorance is epidemic it seems. Gordon describes a friend who runs a fertility clinic in central London who is:

“…slack-jawed with amazement at all the highly educated, highly paid, highly functioning couples who pass through her doors every day with...