Who should bear the cost of IVF? In search of a just solution

In a publicly-financed health care system, there is room for the provision of IVF. This is probably true on an egalitarian account of justice, since the benefit provided to the infertile couple, to whom IVF is offered, is considerable, once their entire life spans are included in the moral calculus (as they should be, on the most plausible interpretation of egalitarian thinking). The argument from adoption, where adoption is seen as a superior alternative to IVF, is shown to rest on a fallacy. From a total utilitarian point of view, it is obvious that IVF should be included in a publicly financed health care system. Here we are allowed to include in our moral calculus the lives of the children who are conceived through IVF. It will be shown that the notion of justice as desert is not applicable to IVF. Other notions of justice, where justice is seen as a matter of rights, or as something resting on an agreement between rational egoists, cannot substantiate that there should be a publicly financed health care system in the first place, so if any of these views are on the right track, the problem of whether IVF should be included in such a system is dissolved rather than solved.