I have a female friend, a devout Christian—very much like a sister to me, who after waiting until her late 30s to get married, discovered her husband (several years younger than her) apparently had very low viability in his sperm.
This woman is very pro-life—firmly accepting the fact that human life is sacred and that life begins at conception.
However, so desperate was she to conceive a child (I believe having a baby was a major motivator for her to marry...) she followed the IVF route, with this caveat: All the fertilized ovum would be, one at a time, implanted inside her womb. None would be aborted.
I believe she told me she allowed three eggs to be fertilized, and she has had the first implanted, and successfully completed the pregnancy, and had the baby. He’s healthy and fine now.
She has pledged to also carry the 2 remaining (frozen) ovum to term, in time.
She’s in a happy marriage—and I’m sure they engage in normal marital relations.
Still, however, when I consider that she was using IVF methods....with the same doctors and professionals who would’ve (routinely) aborted the “least viable” embryi, had they followed standard IVF methods...to me it just seems creepy.
While strong Christians, neither my friend, her husband or I am Roman Catholic, but....I must admit being very (very) leery as to the ethics even of this very circumscribed use of IVF.
Of course I had no influence on her and her husband’s decision to go this way (I’m not their pastor—and I only found out about it after the fact)....still, I feel bad about this. To me, it just doesn’t seem right....even if I can’t quite say why.
It seems to meet the intent, albeit that the suspended existence of the frozen embryos is a little unnerving. What happens to the embryos if she dies or suffers a disease rendering her permanently unable to carry, before she can carry them all? Maybe she’d want to do the other two together to hasten the process, even if it results in twins. Ultimately this is a matter of local church discipline and if her local church has something otherwise to say about it, she’ll have to get that straight with them or move on elsewhere.