Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology

How Common is Gestational Surrogacy?

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West arrive at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards in New York (The Huffington Post)

FILE PHOTO – Kim Kardashian and Kanye West arrive at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards in New York, U.S., August 28, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo

Last month, reality TV personality Kim Kardashian West and her husband Kanye West announced the birth of their third child. The couple’s daughter Chicago was carried via a gestational surrogate. She was created from a fertilized egg taken from Kardashian West, and had no genetic tie to the surrogate.

How common is gestational surrogacy?

It’s not that common, but it’s difficult to nail down exact numbers. The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) reported 1.5K+ babies born from gestational surrogates in 2011, up from 1.3K+ babies born via the method in 2009. Another source reports 1.4K+ babies born via gestational surrogacy.

It’s difficult to pin down an actual number, because some cases of gestational surrogacy may not reported. It’s also difficult to tell when the sample size is so small.

As the procedure becomes more widely available, we’ll be able to see how common gestational surrogacy really is.

Will In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) Replace Sex?

Couple in bed

Couple in bed

Dr. Carl Djerassi recently predicted that sex would become purely recreational by 2050 since so many women are having children via in vitro fertilization (IVF). But do the numbers bear this out?

Earlier this year, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology released a report examining success rates from many IVF clinics. The report revealed that in 2012, IVF clinics performed 165K+ procedures, out of which 61K+ babies were born. Therefore the year had a 37%+ success rate. Two thousand more babies were born in 2012 than in the previous year, and 2012 also had the highest percentage of babies born through IVF thus far.

Dr. Djerassi also remarked that advances in IVF technology will allow parents without fertility problems to consider the procedure. This would, in turn, free up the potential parents (and everyone else) for consequence-free sex.

And Dr. Djerassi would know about recreational sex: In 1951, he helped invent The Pill.