CV NEWSFEED // The rush to provide legal protection for clinics and patients associated with in vitro fertilization following the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling reveals what is actually at stake regarding the practice, says pro life expert Katie Breckenridge.
“Why are clinics concerned that deeming embryos ‘persons’ will harm their business?” Breckenridged asked In a March 27 op-ed published by Angelus News. 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, Breckenridge pointed out, and state lawmakers rushed to pass legislation granting legal immunity to those associated with the practice.
“The Feb. 16 decision reveals an uncomfortable truth about the process,” Breckonridge observed: “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.”
“The moral problems with IVF run deeper than many of us would like to admit,” she wrote, acknowledging the painful reality that couples who struggle with infertility must face when considering IVF treatments:
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.
According to a 2012 study cited in the op-ed, 3.5 million embryos have been created since 1991, but only 235,480 have been successfully implanted. Of the embryos that 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.
Beyond this, Breckonridge continued, citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church: the very fact that IVF renders the sexual act obsolete from procreation renders “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, Breckonridge concluded, the truth about IVF is clear:
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.
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