I recently criticized in vitro fertilization (IVF) as being, despite appearances, unloving. It raises questions of spousal exclusivity when other peoples’ gametes are used. It raises questions of alienation from our bodies and our child’s, who subtly shifts from a gift to be welcomed to a commodity to be ordered. It takes as given rather than challenging socio-cultural practices that contribute to today’s rise in infertility. And it distorts our relationship with God as Lord and Giver of life. I also noted the paradox that while IVF trades in the image of being a “life-giving” act, it is not pro-life. Have you not noticed that it is pro-abortion politicians who have seized upon and misrepresent the Alabama Supreme Court’s Feb. 16, 2024, decision? They’re not pushing life: They know that by coopting people who want to have babies under their “reproductive choice” banner, they expand the tent for relegalizing abortion.

So, why is IVF not pro-life? By how it’s done.

IVF is typically used either when a woman does not produce eggs to become pregnant or when she has obstructed fallopian tubes preventing her egg from encountering sperm deposited during human intercourse. IVF “cures” neither condition; it just bypasses it. In the process, it turns human life cells into specialized parts and human sexual encounter into a lab procedure. As Pope Pius XII prophetically wrote in 1951, “To reduce the common life of husband and wife and the conjugal act to a mere organic function for the transmission of seed would be but to convert the domestic hearth, the family sanctuary, into a biological laboratory” (link here).

Now, obtaining sperm is not that hard. Men produce sperm constantly, from puberty into old age and can most readily (if not morally) get some by masturbation. Women are more complicated. Women generally produce one egg per month from puberty until menopause (in America today, on average at age 51). The egg is only available for a few days monthly. So, there are a lot fewer ova (eggs) and, since fertilization normally occurs within the woman’s body, eggs normally don’t come out.

Getting an egg, therefore, requires going into a woman’s body. Because eggs are so few, so temporally far between and so challenging to get, Big Fertility (Jennifer Lahl’s term for the mega-billion dollar IVF business) generally obtains them by shooting up the woman with hormones to induce “super-ovulation,” i.e., the ripening and eruption of multiple eggs from her ovaries simultaneously. That is not a normal condition, but it creates economies of scale in egg retrieval. Other reasons Big Fertility wants multiple ova: (a) successful implantation of the fertilized ovum is complicated and (b) IVF has a high failure rate.

Like the mega-hormones needed for super-ovulation, similar must be given to whomever is going to carry that baby. If she is a different woman, she will probably be at a different point in her menstrual cycle, but her body must be hormonally tricked into being ready potentially to bear a baby. Now, given this coordination choreography, the IVF industry does not want to risk everything on one egg, especially when that one egg might not fertilize or, even if it does, might develop abnormally. So, here’s where the not pro-life part becomes glaringly evident.

IVF labs typically “harvest” (their word) and fertilize multiple ova simultaneously in order to diminish risks of non-fertilization, deformed development, and/or problems with implantation. After the fertilized eggs develop to a certain point, the lab tech engages in the equivalent of a high school popularity contest, deciding which fertilized eggs are “most likely to succeed,” i.e., develop normally and implant successfully. The “winners” are implanted, and note I say plural. Some IVF clinics will only implant one fertilized ovum. Others will risk multiple implantations to reduce failure risk, with subsequent “selective reduction” (another euphemism from the abortion crowd) to eliminate the extra pregnancies a woman doesn’t want if she finds herself carrying multiple embryos.

So, perhaps she’s been “lucky” and had successful implantation(s). Maybe she’s even “reduced” the load. Back in the lab, there likely still are other fertilized ova, your average classmates that didn’t get voted “most likely to succeed.” What do you do with them?

1. You can destroy them (especially if they are developing abnormally).
2. You can donate them for experimental purposes. Embryonic “stem cell” research was sold to Americans 20 years ago as the greatest medical miracle since snake oil. Biomedical labs want them. Some people — I kid you not — even wonder if they can get a tax deduction on their “donation” (see here).
3. You can freeze them. Maybe you plan on another baby “some time.” Maybe that’ll be sooner than later if you miscarry now. Or, like those extra pork chops you get at Costco, your fertilized embryos can keep in cryo-preserved liquid nitrogen (about -400 degrees) indefinitely. (Well, maybe not indefinitely: some countries do have a “discard by” date if unused).

Currently, it’s estimated that there are at least one million such frozen babies in the United States and perhaps more likely two to three million. A tiny percentage will likely be thawed out for subsequent pregnancies (though I would argue we really are engaged in experimentation, for what do we know about the developmental consequences of extended embryonic cryopreservation). More likely, they will be forgotten. IVF is both expensive and a logistical hassle. Many people abandon their embryos.

Except this is your baby. That’s why you created him.

Maybe a spouse dies. Maybe the couple divorces. (That’s been a problem: who “owns” the embryos and how do you “divide” them up? Since it took two to make a baby, can the one who gets them use them subsequently to birth children without the other’s consent? And how do you specify that “getting?” Is it “custody” or “possession?”) Do those frozen embryos stay on ice indefinitely? Or, at some point, do “abandoned accounts” laws come into play, allowing the clinic to sell or donate them off?

These are the pro-life issues IVF poses which the pro-abortionists would like you to ignore and timid pro-lifers flee from speaking about because it’s “complicated” and not reduced to a soundbite.

With selective reductions, discards, and at least one million frozen embryos, this practice is not pro-life.