April 1, 2025
By Rachel Schnepf
We have all seen the comical sketch in movies or commercials where a young child innocently asks their parents “where do babies come from?” This in turn shows the face of the parent, who’s eyes look ready to pop from their sockets, and then an uncomfortable hemming and hawing ensues while they grapple with how to answer their child. Ultimately, they give some odd answer, not usually the accurate one, and then feel relieved they brushed through it well enough.
Hopefully parents have grown past the embarrassment of having this conversation with their children and are more open and prepared for the teaching opportunity. However, what used to be an uncomfortable yet somewhat simple conversation, has now turned into one of confusion and deeper explanations.
It isn’t just that a man and woman fall in love and then make a baby (very simply put), but now people can have children through surrogacy, artificial insemination, and in vitro fertilization.
This doesn’t mean that these other methods are not done with love, quite the contrary. I have known couples who have had to go through the more unconventional route in order to have their own family. They love their children and are grateful for the advancements in science so that they could have their own biological children.
How common are these services in creating families?
In a KFF Women’s Healthy survey, it states that about 13% of reproductive aged women or their partners sought out fertility services. Of that 13%, only 14% received IVF and another 14% stated they had Artificial Insemination. Compared to the amount of reproductive aged women in the world, approximately 1.9 billion, that means about 247 million women sought fertility services.
One of the modes that families can use to have a baby is through surrogacy. Most people who vie for this route are those who are physically unable to carry a baby on their own due to severe medical conditions, or they are in a same-sex relationship. Not all countries or states within the U.S. allow for surrogacy. Louisiana is the only U.S. state that prohibits all forms of surrogacy, though there are others that have strict limitations. There are quite a few countries in the world that prohibit it as well, like Denmark, Ireland, Spain, and Cambodia. Many other countries don’t allow commercial surrogacy, meaning the surrogate mother gets paid for her services, and only allow it to be done altruistically.
In France, where they have a total prohibition on surrogacy; they have prohibited it because they want to make sure all parties are protected legally, the child included. They also want to stay away from the commercialization, in essence, of buying children. With the commercialization of surrogacy comes exploitation. In an article by BBC, they reported on various situations of maltreated surrogacy mothers in foreign countries as well as abandonment of babies born with disabilities.
In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and Artificial Insemination (AI) are two types of fertilization methods. In many cases, the embryo that is made is biologically the parents. Meaning the egg and the sperm came from the parents. But for medical reasons, they were not able to create a viable embryo on their own. They then turned to IVF to create the embryo and then implant it into the mother so she can carry her own baby. In case of AI, the father has his sperm directly inserted into his wife’s reproductive tract so as to have a higher chance of fertilization.
These processes have helped millions of parents have their own biological children, when they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Though it is expensive and not everyone can afford it, it has proven to be a blessing to those families where it was successful.
Where it can go wrong
Where IVF and AI become morally and ethically hazy is in some of the practices involved in the process. For IVF, many eggs are collected, average over ten, and fertilized creating embryos. But not all of them will be used. Some are cryopreserved to be used by the parents at a later date, while others are either discarded or sent to research facilities. To many, embryos are living, just undeveloped babies and with every discard, means the death of a child, much the same as abortion. To those parents, they treat the embryo as the loss of a child and request special ceremonies for them if they are to be discarded, and some even desire to bury them.
AI on the other hand, sometimes uses sperm that doesn’t belong to the biological father. This is usually the case for men who have infertility problems. In IVF, some couples may use a donated egg instead of the mother’s, also for infertility or other medical problems.
The moral dilemmas in these scenarios are the fact that the child will not biologically be related fully to their parents. This can cause stress in the children when they are older and learn of their lineage. But as in Germany, where egg donation is banned, they reason that it will create a commercialization of purchasing eggs. They also say that the ban is to protect the donors as there are quite a few risks and a lengthy treatment to do the procedure.
In February of this year, Pres. Trump of the United States, signed an executive order to expand access to IVF for Americans. The idea behind the executive order is to make IVF more affordable for the families that want to use it. While this can be a good thing for those families, it can also lead to the discard of many more embryos as well as a higher demand for sperm and egg donors.
The debate on the ethical and moral practices of alternative fertility treatments will always be ongoing. The most important thing to remember is to protect all parties involved, especially the babies who are the most vulnerable. Though these alternative practices have been used in the past and have been successful as well as given much joy to parents, there needs to be extreme caution used and strict regulations set in place. This is to prevent the exploitation and commercialization of creating babies out of the equation as well as prevent the discarding of millions of embryos every year.
