What’s Wrong With In Vitro
Fertilization?
Deeming artificial conception good because it
produces a baby that a parent wants resembles building one’s dream house atop
an ancient burial ground or in an area of natural wonder. Taking a superficial view, those directly
involved, and their family and friends, think it’s great. Yet, when one thinks more deeply and more
collectively, do these processes cost society something unseen, invaluable and
sacred? Assisted conception advocates
probably have not considered the following.
First, assisted conception entails the buying and
selling of life. In a world where
everything from crackers to sex to peace of mind (e.g., Prozac) is for sale,
assisted conception is consumerism taken to its extreme.
Second, IVF entails the mass production-- and mass
destruction-- of life and engenders an “ownership” orientation to life. Because
it’s economically efficient to do so, IVF
practitioners make multiple embryos, use as many as their “owners” want, freeze
the rest for years and destroy them when their owners approve destruction. A question for those who suggest that these
embryos are just undifferentiated cell masses:
If these embryos have no special identity, why do people (or, now, the
population at large that subsidizes these processes by paying health insurance
premiums) spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to implant not just
any old embryos, but, instead, insist on those which bear the characteristics
that they hold dear?
Third, IVF is high tech eugenics. IVF embryos are genetically screened for
defects and gender. Only those
considered suitable are implanted.
Presently, over 90% of embryos suspected to have Down’s
Syndrome are “terminated.” This
quality control process will intensify
as genetic interpretation accelerates. In a high tech version of Jonathan
Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” genetic profiling enables parents to prenatally purge the defective.
Incidentally,
however, while eugenic by design, it turns out that IVF is dysgenic in practice. As reported in newspapers nationwide on
Fourth, assisted conception is a high tech fix for
the social problems of sexual promiscuity and postponed marriage. STD or abortion scarring causes over 75% of
infertility. Most remaining infertile couples have
waited until long after their prime childbearing years to attempt
conception. Instead of confronting our commitment-phobia and
media-fed hyper selectivity of suitable mates, we ask technicians to bail us
out, just as we do—with similarly dubious results-- with so many other social
problems.
Fifth, assisted conception separates sexuality from
life creation. The manufacturing of life moves us one giant step closer to the
Brave New World, in which we become more like serviceable machines, less like
humans. Further, if we can create
children “with” someone without physical intimacy, does the basis for sexual
exclusivity in marriage decline? If we
engage in sex principally because it feels good, does adultery become more
thinkable and doable? Is it a coincidence
that divorce rates spiked when the sexuality was separated from reproduction
and have remained high since?
Sixth, if such human-controlled reprotech as IVF is accepted, on what moral basis could society oppose other forms of reproductive choice, such as selecting a child’s sex, genetically designing the unborn or cloning? Moreover, from both a moral and technological standpoint, IVF facilitates cloning and genetic engineering. The methods and equipment
used in IVF are the same as those used in cloning and GE efforts.
Further, IVF provides an abundance of extra embryos, which technicians
may use as a proving ground for cloning and GE attempts."
On the surface, each of these processes might produce
healthy looking offspring that satisfy parental desires. But, then, wouldn’t those who built houses
on