Thanks, No Name. I'm afraid we're at the "agree to disagree" point. Several good points have been raised about why people here would like to reproduce. However, none have established that having a child is a necessity. And as such, I don't want a penny of my money to handle infertility treatments beyond the basic diagnostics.

As established, I can have children and I choose not to. I am a child of fertility medicine myself, and I am medically fragile. Bringing a child to term would probably not be life-threatening, but it would almost certainly place me in the hospital or at my home for much of the pregnancy. Beyond that, however, I have a genetically transferrable condition which is present in both sides of my family and would most certainly be trasferred to a child I would bear. I don't think that's fair. Obviously I live a more or less good life, but I don't see my own desire to parent a child who looks like me as enough justification for bringing one who would need the same medical services I have used and will use until I die into the world. I can never, for example, NOT have medical insurance.

I am now adopting. White infants and other relatively desirable children are indeed expensive, on par with, say 1-2 IVF treatments. However, "undesirable" children, which is what we're adopting -- in other words children who are black and more than one year old, or older and of any race, are not expensive at all. In fact, there are a lot of incentives. These have actually been a small part of our decision, not in adopting but in how many to adopt. We originally were concerned about whether or not we could pay for college for more than one child, though we both felt isolated as only children. The incentives should allow us to sock away enough for college, though, and that's good for everyone involved.

As to "being ready" to adopt -- you say that as though people don't have the ability to ready themselves. Certainly I think it's better if people do not adopt when they think of adopted children as a poor substitute for a "natural" one, or if they cannot give an adopted child the same love and effection as one that they gave birth to. But these are problems with those considering adoption, and not with adoption as an option.