Fertility rates are rapidly decreasing worldwide, and IVF is often promoted as a solution. However, the IVF process raises significant moral concerns.
IVF stands for in-vitro fertilization. In natural conception, fertilization occurs in vivo, or “in life.” In IVF, fertilization takes place in a laboratory, where a sperm is injected into an egg in vitro, meaning “in glass.” The treatment process involves transferring the resulting embryo(s), a preborn child at an early stage of human development, into the mother’s uterus. Once implanted, he or she can grow, develop, and eventually be born.
Since the Alabama Supreme Court’s 2023 decision declared frozen human embryos to be children, IVF treatment has become a national topic of conversation. Many people questioned whether other Pro-Life states would adopt similar rulings, while anti-Life politicians warned that banning IVF could be the next step in Pro-Life policies.
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What ensued was a nationwide, vigorous defense of IVF by prominent Republicans, with many characterizing this treatment as a Pro-Life good. Alabama’s legislature scrambled to save face, quickly passing a law granting legal immunity to IVF clinics. The Republican National Convention approved a platform declaring that the party “will oppose late-term abortion, while supporting … IVF (fertility treatments).” President Donald Trump even promised that, if elected again, he would pass a law that requires insurance companies to subsidize IVF treatments.
Ultimately, the goal of IVF is to create and birth a healthy child. But when fertilization happens in an artificial setting, things do not always go according to plan. To provide the best opportunities to have the desired child, fertility specialists create several embryos. These embryos are filtered or “funneled” through a screening to find the strongest few for implantation. The embryos that don’t pass the test will likely never be implanted or offered the chance to develop and be born.
In its current form, IVF is an unregulated industry. The state of Texas has NO legal protections for the human embryos created during IVF and never implanted. These “leftover” embryos don’t just disappear. They will likely endure one of these fates:
- Indefinite storage until a future date when the family may want another pregnancy;
- Donation to or adoption by another family, which is realistically only an option for embryos graded as healthy enough;
- Experimentation, which will result in embryo death;
- “Compassionate transfer” into the mother’s uterus at a time in her cycle when the embryo is unlikely to successfully implant; or
- Discarding and destruction.
While IVF offers families struggling to conceive the opportunity to have a pregnancy and a child, the process involves serious threats to human Life. No matter where fertilization occurs, the result is a living human being with infinite inherent value. We abandon the central principle that Life begins at conception if we treat embryos created outside of the womb as disposable.
We love Life, but the Pro-Life movement’s goal is not to simply increase the number of children born. Instead, we aim to protect innocent lives from practices like abortion and euthanasia, which involve the sanctioned killing of human beings. Current IVF standards doom countless preborn babies to death, highlighting a critical need for life-saving reform and regulation.
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