Right now the world population is 7.8 billion, and growing fast. We have doubled our population over just the past 50 years!

Even though the population is growing, fertility rates, overall, are dropping. So, more people are here, but we’re having fewer babies. There’s a lot of reasons for that, and one of them is infertility. The CDC estimates that nearly one out of eight couples struggles to conceive, but because of assisted reproductive technology, we’re upping the population numbers in the United States. The CDC reports that almost 2 percent of all U.S. births annually - or about 4 million babies - are here as a result of things like in-vitro-fertilization (IVF), surrogacy, and egg donation.

Today, you'll meet a fertility doctor, a woman who’s donated eggs five times, one who’s been a surrogate, and one who - through a pandemic - has finally become pregnant using IVF. 

GUESTS:

• Dr. Spencer Richlin is a board-certified Reproductive Endocrinologist with Reproductive Medicine Associates of Connecticut, where he is a partner and Surgical Director
• Sue Cope from-old Lyme, Connecticut, donated her eggs five times
• Heather Manojlovic from Fort Wayne Indiana was a two-time surrogate
• Heather Bower of Wilton, Connecticut, is currently pregnant after using IVF

Image credit: National Human Genome Research Institute / Flickr Creative Commons 

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