Here’s the question we asked our UFI readers:
“Are you supportive of invitro fertilization (IVF) technology for helping infertile couples become pregnant knowing that it often involves the destruction of human embryos?”
Here is how our readers responded:
53 Percent No
41 Percent Yes
6 Percent Don’t know
Although infertility is a painful experience for millions of married couples and technology that ends suffering is always welcome, we still have to take a long hard look at the perhaps unintended consequences that arise from IVF. Here’s a quick overview of some of those issues:
1. Human embryos are human life at its earliest stages of development and should be accorded respect as such. Treatment for infertility often leads to the creation of more embryos than the couple may need. Many of these human embryos are destroyed during the actual IVF treatment, others are frozen, discarded, used for experimentation, or given to other couples.
2. The children that are born as a result of the embryos that are “given away” then struggle with their origins and identities. These “donor-conceived” children have lifelong outcomes that are worse than children raised by their biological parents. Children then begin to be treated as a commodity. At what point are we selling human beings?
3. The women who provide the eggs for fertilization have to endure a medically invasive process that has the potential for serious health risks. Worse yet, no study has ever been done on the risks associated with women going through the process – the medications or the egg harvesting procedures. These women are being drawn to submit to the procedure because of the potential to make substantial sums of money without any real knowledge as to its consequences.