When science and technology open doors that should not be opened, a Pandora’s box spews forth evils that menace humanity. Scientists have opened a perilous door: they are manufacturing human life and using their product as an object of experimentation.
Science without the compass of ethical restraints is taking us on a path towards dehumanization in the name of progress. Modern scientific advances have so much to offer, but they must be guided by ethical principles which respect the inherent dignity of every human being. When science embarks on a Promethean quest, fueled by greed and commercialization, our own humanity is placed at risk.
In the IFV procedure, a woman is given fertility drugs to ensure that she produces several ova which are collected to be fertilized in a petri dish creating several embryos. The healthiest ones are chosen for transfer to the woman’s womb. Many embryos are discarded or frozen. Freezing kills some more. Some embryos are later used for experimentation, which is always lethal.
Recent estimates project that there are 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States laboratories. These embryos are human lives that, given the chance to grow, would develop into a man or a woman. The fate and disposition of these embryos represents a serious moral dilemma which has contributed to a coarsening of the public’s attitude towards the sacredness of human life.
During recent debates before Congress, a couple gave compelling testimony against embryonic stem cell research. The main arguments that they presented were their two young sons who had been frozen embryos that the husband and his wife adopted. We cannot pretend that these embryos are tadpoles. They are human beings with their unique genetic code, full complement of chromosomes, and individual characteristics already in place. Every person alive today started out as an embryo. These early-stage abortions are not morally acceptable. Unfortunately, many people of good will have no notion of what is at stake and simply focus on the baby that results from in vitro fertilization, not adverting to the fact that the procedure involves creating many embryos, most of which will never be born because they will be frozen or discarded.
We do not have a “right to have a child.” Such a right would be “contrary to the child’s dignity and nature. The child is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered an object of ownership; rather, a child is a gift, ‘the supreme gift,’ and the most gratuitous gift of marriage, and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents. For this reason the child has the right to be the fruit of the specific act of conjugal love of his parents; and the child also has the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception”
For us, marriage and motherhood and fatherhood is a vocation, and children are a gift. However, even when procreation is not possible, married life does not for that reason lose its value.
And, in many cases, after a couple adopts a child, many wives find themselves pregnant after a period of time.
Well, then.........in certain religions it is a "sin" to use a Doctor and all his abilities to treat a sick child, done under the pretext of "God's will". Are they wrong to let a child die? Yes, I am well aware my babies were conceived in a petri dish.......with my sperm and my wifes eggs, you think I am an idiot? What about the wonderful drugs that are created in a laboratory? Is that wrong? In case you have missed me pointing this out, my wife and I pro-created successfully 5 times.........leading to miscarriages every one. Was that God's will? Or, was it a medical condition? Either way, they were aborted.
There were 4 embryos placed into my wife.....two which never developed heartbeats and my sons. There were NO EMBRYOS THROWN AWAY OR FROZEN. I am not saying that is the case with everyone, but with us it was.
Obviously you are set in your thinking, as am I. When I meet my maker it will be with the knowledge that I raised my children in His image, children which you degrade with all your writings, even though you call them gifts.
I did enjoy the "many wives find themselves pregnant" line.
I think you need to seperate the morality of the IVF process from the morality of how it is most commonly practiced. I will agree that how it is most commonly practiced, it is a moral travesty, but that doesn't mean that everyone treats their embryos so recklessly. There are people who follow a strict policy of implanting every embryo they've created or donating those embryos to others. It's true that most people don't do this but that's a problem with how IVF is practiced, not a problem with the procedure itself.
What about all the embryos that don't make it? In the natural process, large numbers of embryos don't make it, either. And when you consider that people who turn to IVF are more likely to have problems that cause the natural process to fail, it's not surprising that the IVF process also often fails. While the IVF process adds certain dangers to the fertilized egg, it also can remove some of them. In the big scheme of things, whether a particular fertilized egg is suitable for maturity is in God's hands whether the fertilization was natural or via IVF. Based on my research, the 4 percent figure you cite is because of how IVF is commonly practiced (with parents discarding the extras, creating way more embryos than they'd ever use, genetic testing that damages the embryo, the ICSI process that forces an egg and sperm together that would never naturally join, etc) and not a product of the IVF process, itself, and an infertile couple who "keeps trying" to have a child the natural way may be creating plenty of non-viable embryos that never mature, too.
It's possible to ethically practice IVF by not practicing ICSI, not creating too many embryos, not subjecting them to tests that damage them or condemn them before they've been given a chance, and donating any extra embryos to other couples wanting children. Basically, it's possible to practice IVF ethically by treating the fertilized eggs as children from the start rather that biological samples. That can be done and I know of couples who practice it that way.
Is IVF more "risky" for a fertilized egg than natural fertilization? I'm not sure it is but it might be. Does that make it immoral? I don't think so. It's risky to put your child into a car and go for a drive. It's risky to bring your child to a hospital or have them immunized. Does that mean that parents who drive their children around in a car are immoral for taking that extra risk (usually based on convenience or some other unnecessary desire of the parent to travel somewhere) with their child? Are parents who bring their children to hospitals or have the immunized immoral? Risk is something that each person has to judge for themselves and it's often a matter of trade-offs rather than an easy choice.
Even when a child often does result from an IVF procedure, the travesty of having to create, freeze or destroy so many of that baby's brothers and sisters, your other children, your family, is morally reprehensible.
If you look into the natural fertilization process, you'll find that even naturally, not only do couples commonly suffer miscarriages (most of my friends have had them while trying to have children) but the best current guess is that maybe a third of the eggs that fertilize actually implant and produce a pregnancy. Being pro-life, I don't think that makes them any less human beings, any more than the death rate of children in Africa makes them less human beings. But don't pretend that the natural fertilization process isn't full of children who are created and destroyed before birth for a host of entirely natural reasons beyond the parents' control. I'm right there with you condemning the premeditated destruction of viable fertilized eggs and embryos, particularly for the entirely selfish reason than the parents just don't want to use them, and I'm also sympathetic to your concerns that widespread IVF devalues fertilized eggs and embryos, but that's a problem with how IVF is practices, not a problem with IVF as a procedure. And as much as the IVF process in particular and fertility treatment in general might erode the way people look at fertilized eggs, I think that they also create a countering enhancement effect in that every couple undergoing IVF is keenly aware of their child's existance going back to fertilization (they give parents pictures of the fertilized eggs and embryos), keenly aware of the entire pregnancy continuum as they see pictures and ultrasounds from before most women realize they are pregnant, and many parents feel the hope and dreams of having that child from the moment of fertilization. Yeah, bad things are done in the name of IVF but I think it has some benefits to the pro-life movement, as well.