The Abortion and IVF Paradox

"Abortion takes a life. IVF takes 8-20 lives."

A single in vitro fertilization treatment kills more embryos/zygotes than an abortion.

Please note that this is not an argument in favor of abortion or condemning fertility. There is nothing wrong with having babies, but many pro-lifers who support IVF fertility treatments don't know what it is they're supporting. In fact, many of them have even had babies via IVF. For those who don't know what IVF is, here is a brief definition from www.mayoclinic.org/tests-proce…: "In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a complex series of procedures used to treat fertility or genetic problems and assist with the conception of a child. During IVF, mature eggs are collected (retrieved) from your ovaries and fertilized by sperm in a lab."

IVF isn't a topic that comes up in pro-life circles, but when it does, the cold hard facts about it are usually obscured by warm feelings of love and family. IVF does give parents babies, but it doesn't come without a cost, and I'm not referring to to its price tag of $5,000 to $25,000. Most domestic adoptions cost less than that. But there are much more sinister truths behind IVF.

IVF directly causes the deaths of numerous embryos, and "extras" must be killed or frozen.

IVF usually entails the creation of multiple human embryos to ensure a greater chance of successful implantation. When an IVF treatment is performed, eggs and sperm are mixed together outside the womb, resulting in around 20 zygotes (the earliest stage of human development.) Most of them do not survive to even reach the womb. Generally only around 4-10 of them end up being implanted. In most cases, all but one of the embryos dies after implantation. The surviving embryo has roughly a 50/50 chance of surviving until birth. If it dies, the process must be repeated if the parents want a child. A successful birth can take many, many tries, and each time, many, many embryos are killed. A live birth is often the result of over 100 deaths.

This is not natural. It's not normal for a woman to have over 8 to 20 miscarriages before successfully carrying a baby to term. It's most certainly not normal for her to have around 100 miscarriages! A woman's natural cycle releases only around 1 - 3 egg cells at a time to be fertilized, and if one or more is fertilized, there's a good chance it will survive. IVF is extremely different, as it takes dozens of egg cells from the mother, fertilizes all of them, and then maybe one or two will live. Is it ethical to create so many living humans with the intention that only one or two will survive?

If not all but one of the embryos dies after implantation, the parent(s) must decide if they plan to keep all of the babies or selectively abort some of them. These human embryos are then screened for genetic disorders, handicaps and sometimes even a particular gender. The “undesirable” embryos are aborted. (Nadya “Octomom” Suleman refused this “embryonic discarding”, resulting in her delivering of octuplets). This selective mentality leads to the death of little humans based on their gender, physical and mental handicaps, and how many exist simultaneously. Kate Gosselin of Jon and Kate Plus 8 had a similar situation, and refused to kill any of her children, thus giving birth to sextuplets. Suleman and Gosselin by no means followed the status quo when it came to multiple surviving implantations resulting in IFV. Most of the time, the unchosen embryos are destroyed, thrown out, or washed down the sink. Additionally, a mother pregnant with multiple children is naturally put in the category of high-risk pregnancy. Therefore, even if a pro-life woman refusing selective abortion carries all IVF-created children, this unnaturally creates a dangerous situation for herself and her babies.

Sometimes, the parents do not wish to risk the embryos' lives, and choose to have only 1 or two implanted. This of course is extremely expensive, because the implanted embryos will most likely die and the procedure must be repeated. Thus, the majority of IVF parents don't choose this route. Those who do, however, have the option to freeze the "extra" embryos so that they won't die right away. These frozen embryos are left in stasis until someone takes pity on them and decides to adopt them, or they're experimented on for stem cell research. One must ask: Is it ethical to create so many children with the intention to abandon them?

Fun Fact: Parents who conceive via IVF can now have their "extra" embryos turned into a piece of jewelry: unicornarama.deviantart.com/jo… . I knew people thought of babies as fashion accessories, but I didn't know it was this literal. This jewelry-made-from-babies demonstrates how IVF has cheapened the value of human life to the extreme. Surplus embryos are now wantonly killed and encased in glass/amber to be worn as trinkets.

IVF takes away homes from children in the adoption/foster care system, and from children in orphanages around the world.

People get IVF treatments because they are infertile or just can't get pregnant for whatever reason. These are the kind of people who used to be most likely to adopt. Now, because of IVF, these couples have found a way to ensure that the children they raise have their own genes and can get children without adopting. Thus, children who are put into the adoption system are now even less likely to be adopted.

In the U.S., there are around 101,666 children waiting to be adopted out of the adoption system (there are 397,122 children in the foster care system, but only 101,666 are eligible for adoption; the others are in the system for various other reasons, namely family financial crises.) Between 2007 and 2013, over 2.5 million babies were born using IVF treatments. That's roughly 416,666.67 IVF babies born every year during that time, and IVF treatments are becoming more and more common with each passing year. If only 101,666 of those parents chose to adopt instead of get IVF treatments, there would be no children waiting for adoptive homes in the United States, and there would still be 315,000 couples left over waiting for children. Every single child in the U.S. who is waiting to be adopted would have a home and a family if it were not for IVF.

I'm still running the worldwide numbers because those are less clear-cut, especially when it comes to the number of orphans in the world. However, as close as I can find it, there are between 50 million and 153 million orphans throughout the entire world. According to the same source as above, there have been an estimated total of 5 million IVF babies born worldwide. Unfortunately, that only puts a small dent in the worldwide orphan crisis. However, the 416,666.67 IVF births is solely from the US, so the worldwide IVF birth rate may very well be above the estimated number of orphans living worldwide.

IVF puts mothers at risk and supports cruelty towards animals.

Anthony Caruso, a former IVF practitioner was horrified when he realized that his efforts to help families struggling with infertility was causing so much death. This is echoed in a New York Times cover story about a woman named “Jenny” who aborted one of her twins conceived after IVF. “Had the pregnancy occurred naturally, she said, ‘I wouldn’t have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there’s a natural order, then you don’t want to disturb it. The pregnancy was all so consumer-ish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could control.’”

Many women need to undergo hormone therapy before and during IVF to prepare their bodies to accept the implanted embryo. Estrogen levels are usually boosted during IVF (as well as natural pregnancies) to strengthen the endometrial wall of the uterus. There are a slew of chemical-related side effects that come with a number of the hormone therapies used, but simply altering hormone levels alone can come with consequences. Having high levels of estrogen can cause irregular periods, depression, uterine fibroids, osteoporosis, memory loss, and infections.

Many artificial estrogen therapies also come from PMU horses, and is, in layman's terms, urine from pregnant mares. PMU horses are often treated very poorly. While some PMU mares are simply horses used for breeding, such as racehorses, showhorses, etc., many are raised solely for their urine. Mares are impregnated as soon as they can physically carry a foal. Most reach the point where they must be artificially inseminated because they no longer have any interest in stallions. To reduce lactation time and thus bring mares back into heat again faster, newborn foals are taken from their mothers. The mares spend the majority of their lives being pregnant. As one would expect, PMU facilities have an enormous surplus of foals. These foals are sold for extremely low prices, and many end up with "kill buyers," people who buy horses with the intention of selling them to slaughter. If the foals live in a place where it's illegal to slaughter foals, such as the U.S., then the kill buyers will smuggle them out, generally in extremely poor conditions. Foals are often half starved and dehydrated by the time they are slaughtered.

IVF raises the chances of birth defects as well as mental and physical handicaps.

Babies conceived through IVF are born often prematurely, and most, if not all, have lower birth weights and many are at risk or even die at birth. Many are stillborn. www.dailymail.co.uk/health/art…

Illinois Right to Life released a story on IVF, noting a study done by the New England Medical Journal which showed evidence that babies conceived by IVF have a 1 in 10 risk of birth defects – twice the rate of babies born naturally – including holes in their hearts, the development of only one kidney, brain abnormalities, and cleft lips and palettes. Studies by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Washington University discovered that children conceived from IVF have a six-fold increase in risk of Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, which causes malformations and cancer. This fact alone should cause us to question the morality of IVF. These are not "unfeeling clumps of cells." These are conscious babies.

IVF-conceived children often develop emotional problems due to regretting how they were conceived.

As one IVF-conceived individual says: “I hate being donor conceived. I think it is ridiculous and bizarre that the two people that made me have never met and never will meet. I think it’s creepy that my dad was paid. I think it’s creepier that agents and salespeople and commercial doctors worked so hard to create me and now that I’m an adult have no interest in my opinion. They’re like drug pushers. Selling substances that cure baby cravings. Do they have anything to cure my father cravings?” www.lifesitenews.com/news/test…

IVF babies often feel cheated on, knowing that they were not given a choice whether or not they or their siblings lived or died, whether or not mares and foals suffered and died for them, and knowing their parents did not care enough about them possibly having birth defects as to choose a healthier route. Do you really want your child to grow up knowing that dozens (possibly hundreds and maybe even thousands) of his brothers and sisters are either dead, frozen, or are being experimented on? Because that's what every single IVF child faces.

Please note: It is never the child's fault if they were conceived through IVF. It's the parents' fault through-and-through. No child is responsible for the choices of his/her parents, not matter how heartless and insensitive those choices may have been. IVF children are in no way "less human" than anyone else.









So in the end, the question must be asked: if prolifers oppose abortion because it takes a human life, should we support IVF? After all, IVF is most certainly not the only option available for infertile couples.

Food for thought.






Sources:
bigthink.com/harpys-review/the…
www.mayoclinic.org/tests-proce…
www.dailymail.co.uk/health/art…
www.humanesociety.org/news/mag…
www.lifenews.com/2011/09/06/pr…
www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/t…
www.dailymail.co.uk/health/art…
ccainstitute.org/index.php?opt…