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1. Public funding of ART
Principle of justice: every person should have access to healthcare on the basis of need. As a consequence, discrimination on the basis of income (personal financial resources) is unacceptable.
Solution: guarantee access for everyone without excessive burden, either through reimbursement by private or public health insurance.
However, things are more complicated. Some restrictions will be needed since no country has unlimited resources:
- fertility preservation (age-related freezing and disease-related freezing) - number of cycles
- age of the woman ...
Public funding of ART
Main problem: status of infertility
Is it a disease (medical) or a desire (childlessness)?
If there is a physical problem that prevents me from having children, I am still only infertile or ‘handicapped’ if I want to have children. So infertility is a ‘desire-dependent disease’.
A basic rule is that society should only intervene when the person has a need, not when the person has a desire.
However, there exists no objective way to distinguish need from desire. The concepts should be framed in a quite complicated web of arguments such as what makes a good life, what role for medicine etc.
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