Posted on 07/25/2004 10:03:03 PM PDT by Coleus
There are people who practice IVF but who do not purposely destroy or abort embryos while seeking to get pregnant. For example, my wife knows a woman whose husband has no vas diferens (the duct that lets the sperm leave the testicles) and they used IVF to have children. They've been using every embryo they created and giving it a chance at life.
Are some embryos lost during the process? Yes. But embryos and fetuses are lost during the normal process of trying to get pregnant. Some estimates suggest that as few as 40% of naturally fertilized eggs result in a pregnancy, the rest failing to implant or grow beyond the initial stages. Yes, some embryos stop growing after a day or two or die while being frozen in a test tube but a similar number of embryos stop growing after a day or two or die in the mother's reproductive tract doing things the natural way, too.
Do those 7 miscarriages mean that you killed 7 children? Of course not. Does the fact that an IVF embryo stops growing or doesn't result in a life birth after being implanted mean that the parents or doctors killed a child? I don't think so. Yes, you can argue that the risk to the embryo is higher during IVF than during natural fertilization but then you go down a path of reasoning that suggests that any woman who suffers a miscarriage because she didn't spend her pregnancy in bed is guilty of murdering her child because of the risks she took while pregnant or, at the very least, that any woman who suffers more than one or two miscarriages is a murderer if she keeps trying to get pregnant and has more miscarriages. That sort of accidental and unintended death is a normal part of pregnancy, so long as recklessness isn't involved, and is in God's hands.
I do think that Coleus raises some excellent points and I understand why and respect why the Catholic Church opposes IVF. In practice, many embryos are purposely destroyed by parents who don't want them or given over to medical experimentation. But I think it would be far more constructive and morally sound to focus attention on the people who create more embryos than they ever intend to use and then destroy the extras or, worse, on those who use genetic testing to select the sex or some other feature that they want as well as practices that involve playing God (e.g., replacing the nucleus of a fertilized egg to, in essence, create a child with three parents -- two for the nucleus and one for the mitochondria). I don't think that most people would fault a couple for trying to have a child via IVF, even if they failed, any more than they'd fault you and your wife for having 7 miscarriages while trying to have a child.
IVF, itself, does not intentionally take an innocent human life any more than conventional attempts at getting pregnant frequently do, especially among the same risk class of person who would seek IVF. Why is it worse for a person to fertilize 20 embryos and only have one child than it is to have 7 miscarriages and an unspecified number of eggs that were fertilized but never implanted trying to get pregnant naturally to have one child, especially if one considers even blocking contraception like a condom a sin, too? In neither case is a person intentionally taking an innocent life, even though children are lost.
It's not IVF that's the problem. It's the abuse of IVF and the careless destruction of embryos that's the problem (and Coleus is absolutely right to shine a moral light on that). But there are people who can and do practice IVF responsibly, with due consideration placed on giving every embryo created a chance to be born, but there are also far more people who simply destroy the embryos that they don't want once they have the children they do want. It's that abuse and willing destruction of embryos that's the more constructive target of criticism than people who simply need help having a child and use every embryo that's created.
Adoption is not a ‘gift’ either. There is a LOT of pain involved for the Adoption Triad, the pain of infertility as one of the many aspects. Im not against adoption, but as an adoptee myself, I wish people would stop treating it as though it were a ‘gift.’ Identity is seriously crippled for an adoptee. Think of how upset people get when their ID is stolen by someone. A baby is given very little or no option to recover it...no matter how much love is showered on it. This is especially true for international adoptions.
Bumpus ad summum
Thanks for the ping. Keep up the good work :)
She HAD one baby. She KILLED about 140 babies.
What’s funny is that by your total contempt for the value of those 140 babies, you provide solid corroboration for the assertion that IVF entails contempt for the value of the human person.
Yeah. That “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” obviously put together by a bunch of wacked-out, uneducated, fringe nut-jobs.
Being expected to arrive at the Last Judgment WITHOUT having killed 140 babies! That’s SUCH a STRICT standard!!! Who can POSSIBLY be expected to make it through life without killing 140 babies??? It’s the return of the Puritans and the Spanish Inquisition, all rolled into one!!!
I hope you’re just trying to be funny. If, on the other hand, you are serious, you need to review your high-school—heck, GRADE-school biology. A sperm cell has 23 chromosomes. It is not a human being. A fertilized ovum has 46 chromosomes. It IS a human being.
Which is better: for a mother to kill 140 of her own children, or for a mother to NOT kill 140 of her own children?
It’s shocking how many people there are on FR who see nothing objectionable about murdering hundreds of babies, as long as the OVERALL process is “respectable” and results in a baby that some wealthy, famous person “wants.”
“Moral imbecile” is the correct term for people who make moral judgments based on the “respectability” or “decorousness” of a procedure, rather than on the reality that people are being murdered.
I am reporting you for abuse. The reason: advocates killing babies, which is a form of BIGOTRY, which is not allowed on FR.
I am reporting you for abuse. The reason: advocates killing babies, which is a form of BIGOTRY, which is not allowed on FR.
Infertility is not a life-threatening illness. No one has the right to kill 140 OTHER PEOPLE in order to remedy infertility. I am reporting you for abuse, because you advocate killing babies, which is a form of BIGOTRY.
More precisely, I WOULD deny anyone treatment for cancer if the treatment required killing 140 OTHER PEOPLE.
If you cannot comprehend why it is objectionable to KILL 140 BABIES in order to procure ONE baby, then you didn’t wake up, or have lunch, nearly so smart as you indicate on your graph.
“You live in the 10 century.”
Not only that, today is a SATURDAY. Killing babies is OKAY on SATURDAYS!!!! It’s on WEDNESDAYS that killing babies is wrong.
Check the dates.
So you’re saying you don’t know the difference between an unfertilized ovum and an embryo? In which case, I just hope you don’t hold a job on which your illiteracy endangers the lives of others.
Yes, unfertilized ova AND embryos die every day, of natural causes. The the fact that thousands of people of every age die every day of “natural causes” doesn’t mean that human beings are authorized to kill each other.
Yeah, all those millions of dollars spent in the two centuries on “leaps of faith” like microscopes, chemical tests, x-rays, electron microscopes, sonograms, CAT scans, etc. What a waste. All we REALLY need for scientific research is to look at things and decide what it LOOKS like. A human embryo doesn’t LOOK like a “baby” to me! Like, I look around, and the earth sure LOOKS flat!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.