My step-DIL just had twin girls from IVF. They tried everything else. Yes, a few didn’t take before these but how is that different from “naturally” fertilized eggs not implanting in the uterine wall or miscarrying for whatever reason?
And here’s hope that having children will temper her liberal views :)
The difference is the non-implantation and miscarriage are natural processes, while intentionally creating a human and killing it when it is no longer useful is murder. It's like the difference between a born person dying of cancer, versus being shot by his parents.
Congratulations on the twins! I hope you understand that those of us against IVF are still thrilled by the new life that results.
The problem is that IVF takes into human hands that which belongs to God. Scientists are creating life knowing that most of that life will be malformed and die or be destroyed. Living human beings are being treated as experiments, knowing that most will die or be frozen with no determined end.
I was fairly indifferent to IVF until I heard an aquaintance happily describing his and his wife’s experience. Multiple eggs were fertilized, and those that successfully reached a certain embryo stage were “graded”, and “bad quality” embryos were immediately destroyed. Medium and high quality embryos were used or frozen, and the couple were given the choice as to what to do with the others. All but the highest quality were destroyed. This story was told to me after the birth of the 2nd IVF baby, when there was still one frozen high-quality embryo left. My aquaintence was lamenting what to do with that one because he didn’t “want another child”.
I had to leave the room at that point because I was afraid of what I might say. (You already have another child!) He was so nonchalant about whether or not to allow his purposfully created, apparently perfect embryo to survive simply because he didn’t want it that I was floored.
For anyone who believes that life begins at conception, IVF is simply unacceptable. And scientifically, life begins at conception. There is no question that a new human being is formed when the new DNA combination is made at conception and begins to divide by its own living power. The fact that that is happening in a petri dish, under a microscope doesn’t change the humanity of the result.
It is a complete unique human, it is living, it is growing, and when conceived by God’s design it will continue to live unless something disrupts its development. The fact that a technician is grading living embryos and routinely destroying them is downright Frankinsteinian.
The statistics you can most easily find point to the percent of successful pregancies after implantation, which can vary but seem to average around 65%. That doesn’t sound so bad, but that means more than 30% die. What is harder to find is how many petri dish fertilizations go wrong and don’t properly divide past a few cells. Were these early humans? Maybe not, but horrifically, maybe so. That percentage also doesn’t include those embryos destroyed as “inferior”.
Miscarriages are an entirely different story. They are not intended or brought about selectively for reasons of convenience. Accidents happen, many people die “before their time”. That doesn’t justify intentional killing.
Every IVF pregnancy comes at the cost of destroying multiple human lives.
Food for thought, I hope.
Love,
O2