A user named Mike, who describes himsefl as a fertility specialist who has kids of his own through in vitro fertilization, passionately attempts to rebut the IVF opponents commenting on my post about the Vatican statement. First, he notes that those choosing this procedure “are not people having a cosmetic procedure on a whim, because it’s trendy or fashionable. They have desparately tried to have children by natural means, the way nature intended. But it has not worked.”
Second, he argues that many of the “discarded” embryoes would not have been viable and that those that are treated with “incredible care.”
Finally, he suggests that the concern for the accidental taking of a “life” (the embryo) seems selective or hypocritcal given our posture on other issues:.
Cigarette smokers and alcohol users are murderers too. They are slowly poisoning their systems with toxins that are PROVEN to cause illness and disease. Second hand smoke causes just as much illness as smoking yourself. Alcohol causes liver disease and hypertension. How about overeating and obesity…i wonder how many believers that IVF is murder are Obese, drink alcohol regularly, or smoke? Well, you are slowly murdering yourselves (and possibly others) with these habits…you are just doing it over 25 years rather than in an instant, as with suicide. But you probably will never nit-pick over those habits, if you enjoy alcohol, tobacco, and overeating.
posted January 5, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Bingo. That is the problem with fundamentalist/literalistic/conservative/followers-of-ancient-creeds Christians – they define their ‘love’ of God through hatred of others. Since alcohol and tobacco, wonderfully rich food and, if I may add another to the list, sedate living are oh-so-delightful, they cheerfully ignore these forms of murder.
I am not up on the most current science, but recall having been taught in High School sex-ed that the chance of any given zygote surviving the first trimester is, at best, one in two. I don’t hear any of the people screaming about how couples are ‘murdering’ 50% of their babies, nor do I know of any young couples refusing to even attempt to have children, knowing that they will be losing nearly half of all of those they have created.
posted January 6, 2009 at 12:14 am
A note to panthera and Mike. Actually, the Church has long ago recognized the self-destructiveness of gluttony and alcoholism. Likewise, it recognizes the self-destructiveness of all self-mutilatory practices. They are objectively regarded as sinful, precisely because of their destructiveness. To suggest that the Catholic Church has ever condoned these practices is to reveal a blind spot in one’s reading list.
There is all the difference between a couple trying to have a child ( a moral good) with nature taking its course, and a couple contracting a technician to sort through thirty or forty human beings in their embryonic stage of development, looking for ‘keepers’.
The responsible couple who trusts to nature ad God’s providence, accepts whatever child comes their way. Handicaps are no impediment to the full love of these parents. The couple seeking IVF allows the staff to throw away nascent human lives in search of the unblemished.
Reproductive endocrinologists who do this, who also immerse many of these little humans in liquid nitrogen to freeze them and arrest their development differ markedly from their peers in medicine.
As a Ph.D. Microbiologist whose interest lies in infectious diseases, I know of no other branch of medicine that simply throws away human lives deemed unfit or unworthy, OB/Gyn’s who perform abortions being the exception.
Mike speaks of the desperation of the infertile couple. Yes, it’s agonizing to watch and worse to experience subjectively. However, responsible science and medicine must be willing to say NO. NO you cannot employ a technology that offends human dignity by throwing out humans who present as over-ripened fruit. NO you cannot offend human dignity by creating human beings and then arrest their development by deep-freezing them until YOU are ready for them to continue their development. NO, the act of procreation should not be transmogrified into a technologized process of manufacture with the parents relegated to the sidelines as observers.
Desperation leads to illogic. How could a responsible couple, desperate for a child to love actually sanction the killing of up to dozens of their own embryonic babies? How could a couple desperate to share their love freeze many of their own embryonic babies? This is why desperation is the least acceptable motive to push human dignity off track in a new direction. I fear that direction leads to the edge of an abyss.
posted January 6, 2009 at 8:17 am
“How could a responsible couple, desperate for a child to love actually sanction the killing of up to dozens of their own embryonic babies?”
They don’t. It’s really that simple. Some of the embryos simply do.not.survive — and they wouldn’t have survived in the womb either. Your description of the IVF process is a totally perverted version of the reality.
Where do you get the idea that a, “a responsible couple, desperate for a child to love actually sanction the killing of up to dozens of their own embryonic babies?”? This isn’t 1998 when the woman is stimulated to create 30 or 40 eggs and they attempt to fertilize them all before they start dying off at the three day mark. I’d suggest that you read up on the CDC’s stats on ART and stop throwing around your microbio ph.d. as if you are an expert in the IVF process — you aren’t and that’s clear by the sort of arguments you make.
I understand the church’s positions re: IVF takes the act of creation outside of the couple and that doesn’t fit with the Catholic rules on procreation and therefore, IVF is unaccepatable. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for their position. These others that they are making about the creation and destructions of millions of embryos do not fit with the reality of the process and are, therefore, not as valid as they could be.
With regards to the freezing, the embryos aren’t frozen out of convenience. They are frozen because it’s safer — for the children and the mother — to only implant a lower number of embryos to bring the pregnancy to full term so that everyone is healthy. Again, your description of the process and the reasons behind the process totally pervert the reality into something that is sick and wrong. It’s not. Fundamentally the couple and doctors are doing everything they can to do the least amount of stimulation, fertilization, and implantation they can in order to produce one healthy child. No one is actively trying to create or freeze a small army as you seem to believe.
posted January 6, 2009 at 10:04 am
Gerard Nadal,
Thanks for the info. I was, actually, aware that the Church regards overindulgence as sin. Unfortunately, I did not make myself clear.
It seems to me more than hypocritical for Christians to focus on a small, select group of what they consider to be ‘sins’ whilst ignoring or minimizing the consequences of others.
I say ‘consider to be’ because I do not consider gay love to be sin. I have no standing and thus no right to limit IVF or abortion.
I can not understand why it is fine for a heterosexual couple to attempt procreation again and again, knowing that at least half of these fetuses will be spontaneously aborted when it is not acceptable for them to search out the most viable zygote and then implant the zygote, increasing the chances that this zygote will survive to become a living, independent person.
Calling this mass-death ‘nature’ just doesn’t make it different in my eyes, indeed, given the current state of the art, it can well be argued that a mutually infertile or severely incompatible couple will ‘kill’ fewer zygotes through IVF than through spending the 20-35 years or so of their fertility losing zygotes or fetuses in the first trimester.
Now, it may well be valid to ask the question why, given the number of orphaned and abandoned children in this world, any couple should choose to procreate when they could give an existing human being a loving, cherished home. Again, I lack standing – being gay I can only adopt, should I desire children.
Personally, I have never bought a dog from a puppy farm or a cat out of a shop window, preferring to seek out someone who needs a home at the local animal shelter.
On a side note, now that the fundamentalist, literalistic, conservative (but not followers of ancient creeds) Christians are beginning to accept that homosexuality is not a choice, but inherent, we are hearing all sorts of suggestions from many of these charming people that genetic or hormonal intervention be conducted to prevent us from being born or to force us into heterosexuality.
Talk about hypocrisy…
posted January 6, 2009 at 11:14 am
Well, as the opponents of IVF have about as much practical influence as snowballs in Hawaii, it really does not matter very much what they oppose. It’s not like anyone is going to pay any attentionn to them.
posted January 7, 2009 at 12:36 am
Danielle,
Actually, I do have extensive knowledge of IVF. That aside, one need only do some reading from CDC and web sites for ART clinics to see that perhaps your vision is somewhat clouded.
According to a 2002 RAND Corporation study, there are over 400,000 embryos in cryopreservation. You say, “No one is actively trying to create or freeze a small army as you seem to believe.” 400,000 is DOUBLE the number of soldiers in the United Kingdom’s military. While no one may have been actively trying to build those numbers, here we are.
Yes, fewer eggs are taken in any given round of IVF. Despite your assertions to the contrary, those deemed not viable are discarded. Inasmuch as the couple has contracted this service, they condone this action. Considering that many couples require several rounds of IVF, the numbers eventually approach those of the 1998 technological approach that you cite.
You talk of cryopreservation as a means of protecting the mother and baby. Which baby? The one in utero? What of those you admit end up in liquid nitrogen? These 400,000+ humans are largely an excess. Most are no longer wanted by their parents. They have become the focal point in the debate over embryonic stem cell research. Many wish to use them, that is, dismember them. The alternative is presented as death in the deep freeze, or autoclaving. What of THEIR right to have their development go unmolested? Again, this is done with the couple’s consent.
My definition of “safer” for these children is a bassinet next to their parent’s bed, not liquid nitrogen, not autoclaving, not dismemberment. If this sounds ugly and twisted, it is the reality created by the IVF community of clinicians and couples. Its ugliness animates the vociferousness of the Catholic Church’s condemnation of it.
Finally Danielle, you say to me, “your description of the process and the reasons behind the process totally pervert the reality into something that is sick and wrong.”
It is.
It perverts parenthood and parental responsibility by treating children as property that can be stored like so many mink coats in cold storage. These are autonomous human beings with God-given inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of their happiness. Those ideas in our founding document are not pretty poetry. For IVF participants they are a howling reproach.
posted January 7, 2009 at 1:22 am
Panthera,
I enjoyed reading your recent post. If I understand your description of not having standing, you seem to be saying that because you are gay and can only adopt, that you don’t have a voice in this debate. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Gay or heterosexual, we all share a common human nature and human dignity. Because of this, I share your revulsion for those who claim to be christians, but hate gays. Even St. John the Evangelist said, “Anyone who says he loves God but hates his brother is a liar.”
You also touch on what is an extension of the distorted ethics of manipulation that give rise to IVF. You are concerned about those who would genetically engineer egg and sperm to prevent homosexuality, or attempt to hormonally manipulate adult gays into heterosexuality.
You are right to fear manipulation of your developmental trajectory through life. With IVF, that’s the point.
In the case of the heterosexual couple attempting natural birth, they will the embryo to live. If it does not, it is through no volitional act of the couple, who try again, and again. They gave that embryo its chance in utero.
In the case of the IVF couple, they permit the sorting through of many embryos, not giving all a chance in utero. The destruction of some, the freezing of others is done with the consent of the parents. The immorality, beyond surrendering their procreative action to technicians, lies in their consent to kill the weak embryonic humans, and freeze others.
Your goodness of heart is so clear in your vision of the needs of orphaned children and pets. What you suggest is the morally good response to infertility-adoption.
God Bless.
Actually, the point that the Church is trying to make