CV NEWS FEED // The rush to provide legal protection for clinics and patients associated with in vitro fertilization following an Alabama Supreme Court ruling reveals what’s at stake regarding the practice, says pro-life expert Katie Breckenridge.
“Why are clinics concerned that deeming embryos ‘persons’ will harm their business?” Breckenridge asked in a March 27 article published by Angelus News. “Because the Feb. 16 decision reveals an uncomfortable truth about the process: that the experimenting on and discarding of human embryonic lives is a necessary part of IVF. As a result of this commodification of embryonic persons, only 7% of all lab-created children are born alive.”
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to grant embryos legal rights under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, “panic” ensued from the media, according to Breckenridge. State lawmakers rushed to pass legislation granting legal immunity to those associated with the practice.
“The ugly truth behind IVF is not easy to digest. For many couples struggling with infertility, the procedure offers a convenient — albeit expensive — answer to their suffering, and is widely seen as a moral good,” she wrote. “But the moral problems with IVF run deeper than many of us would like to admit.”
She cited a 2012 study that found that of the 3.5 million embryos who have been created since 1991, only 235,480 have been successfully implanted. Of the embryos who were not successfully implanted, 1.7 million were discarded; 23,480 embryos were destroyed after being removed from storage.
“If you add up the numbers of embryos who are disposed of, do not survive the thawing process, or are donated to research, IVF eliminates millions of human beings,” Breckenridge stated.
She said the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s 2377th paragraph exposes the “most basic flaw” of IVF: that, in separating the sexual act from procreation, the practice hands over “the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person.”
From a baseline moral perspective, Breckenridge concluded, the truth about IVF is clear: it’s about the money.
“It’s all part of an ever-expanding, money-hungry, child-commodifying multibillion dollar fertility industry that profits off of the creation and destruction of embryonic human beings — and one that continues to get a free pass from politicians, mass media, and often, well-intentioned but ill-informed citizens,” Breckenridge said.
