….Though many Americans, including pro-lifers, might not be familiar with the technology, in vitro fertilization probably has a more destructive impact on unborn life than abortion. According to the latest statistics available from the CDC, in 2019, there were 330,773 reproductive cycles conducted by US fertility clinics, resulting in 83,946 live born infants. A third of these cycles were for banking where eggs or embryos are frozen for future use. The other cycles were attempts to conceive and bring to term a child. In the typical cycle, multiple eggs are retrieved and fertilized. The resulting embryos are sorted and one or more implanted. The leftover embryos are frozen, donated for research, or discarded. If the mother ends up with a multiple pregnancy, she may choose a “fetal reduction.”
In other words, to bring one child to life normally involves sacrificing other embryos, often many. In one study, the median number of eggs retrieved per cycle was nine, with five being successfully fertilized. If we calculate using this median rate, in 2019 out of a million embryos involved in IVF cycles, 84,000 made it to term—the remaining 900,000 did not. By comparison, in the same year, the CDC reported 629,898 abortions. Both figures are inaccurate and out of date, but the basic comparison holds: death by IVF probably exceeds death by abortion.
This disregard for life is exacerbated by the fact that the fertility industry is a competitive business. The CDC tracks success rates of clinics so that consumers can choose where to take their business. This provides a strong incentive for clinics to harvest and fertilize an optimum number of embryos. For example, the study referenced above found a strong connection between live-birth rates and the number of eggs retrieved, maxing at fifteen eggs. Following this guidance, a clinic will want to maximize its retrieval and fertilization of eggs….
This commodification of the human person is aggravated by the high costs of these technologies. Poor people do not use IVF to have babies. However, they may be used by IVF to provide the donor gametes and rented wombs that are increasingly the stock in trade of the billion-dollar fertility industry. If we are disturbed by the amount of money that fuels abortion, we should be appalled by the money that goes into the manufacture of babies. There are certain things that just should not be for sale—like eggs and wombs.
This threat to dignity is not just to the children involved in IVF but to the whole of society. We have seen clearly over the decades how the abortion license has lowered our respect for the human person at all stages of life. IVF is gradually having the same effect: a community that denies civil protection to its most vulnerable members is on a slippery slope where it becomes easier to deny that protection to everyone else….
The above comes from a July 17 posting in The Public Discourse.
What about all the natural conceptions that don’t implant? Those don’t count?
Natural conceptions that do not implant, are an act of God, just like miscarriages. Mankind must never play God– that’s a sin. IVF should be strictly illegal.
Those, like spontaneous abortions or miscarriages, are not intentional. Of course, they “count,” including to God. People, including children, die. That’s different than artificially creating humans with the intent to “do away with” many of them. As noted, “The leftover embryos are frozen, donated for research, or discarded. If the mother ends up with a multiple pregnancy, she may choose a “fetal reduction.” Human beings should not be frozen, experimented upon until death or “discarded.” This is mass murder, because it is premeditated and with intent.
I think it’s a stretch to say that “babies” are killed when it’s just fertilized eggs that are discarded. That’s not a baby. It’s a human life, to be sure, but it’s not a baby. Let’s use correct terminology.
Human life at ALL stages is precious! That is why parents cry and mourn the death of their beloved child, lost in miscarriage. The parents could feel and sense the presence of their little baby, in the mother’s womb. A child has died! A human life, at every single stage– is created by Almighty God, on His terms– not yours. A life lost, means– Death has occurred. And a little soul goes back to God the Creator. You do not need a huge mass of cells that makes up a great, big, full-grown easy-to-see, human body– to call it rightfully, a human life! And you cannot see the human soul, at all, which is very real, and eternal — the soul survives Death, the loss of the human body.
Death is part of life. Death is not in and of itself evil, except it is a manifestation of the Fall. But death is quite common, even naturally, among human embryos. If an embryo dies, that is not the same as a sentient human, attached to others through bonds of love and commitment. it isn’t murder. It isn’t even infanticide. We make a mistake when we equate a few human cells with a human being. That mistake is a political mistake. It is a theological mistake. It is a moral and ethical mistake. That is not to say that all human life at all stages ought to be protected. It is just to say that an embryo is not a baby, despite the emotional pull that nomenclature has for some of us. As the mainstream catholic position now stands, a pregnant person who has a natural abortion- that is to say a miscarriage – is guilty of killing a child. That is of course nonsense. Mothers who miscarry are not murdereres! But that is the logical conclusion we get from folks who want to make embryos into human beings, and to say that anything that causes the death of an embryo or a fetus is murder.
A miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) has never been considered the same as a direct abortion, where the child is intentionally and directly killed. Taking out an ectopic pregnancy was never considered a direct abortion as the death of the child is not what is intended. Not even when abortion was illegal in this state.
Any woman who has birthed a living child, knows what the Bible means when it says St. John the Baptist leaped in his mother’s womb at the presence of the Lord Jesus in his own mother. The little ones find each other.
You are misrepresenting the Catholic position. It is not the death of an embryo that is immoral. It is the killing of an embryo. A woman who miscarries is not guilty of killing a child. (Please it is wrong and cruel to add to that maternal guilt scenario.)
– At that time of Conception, an embryo receives its soul,
also
– You said: “a pregnant person who has a natural abortion- that is to say a miscarriage – is guilty of killing a child.”
“A pregnant person” ? You parrot every liberal absurdity you read.
No, A pregnant woman’s miscarriage was never considered murder.
Whoopeee!
more bio/techno tricks …
Deadly Tricks