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SOULS ON ICE

The costs of in vitro fertilization are moral and spiritual—not just financial
Christianity Today Editorial|July 1, 2003

2003
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In early May The Washington Post reported a statistic that should alarm anyone
who cares about innocent human life: nearly 400,000 embryos, a surplus of
nascent human beings, lie frozen in laboratories throughout this nation. The
number comes from a national survey conducted by the RAND Corporation and the
Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.

Now let that number sink in for a moment. We're talking about the equivalent of
people living in Augusta, Georgia, or Flint, Michigan, or Salinas, California.
These embryos came into being through in vitro fertilization (IVF), which since
the birth of British baby Louise Brown in 1978 has become one of the most common
forms of scientifically assisted conception.

As its name implies (in vitro meaning "in glass"), in vitro fertilization
involves "harvesting" a woman's eggs and fertilizing them with sperm in a
laboratory. One or more embryos are returned to the woman's body, and—if
everything goes according to plan—a previously infertile couple will manage to
have a child.

Our culture being what it is, however, IVF often is controlled by economies of
scale. So, for instance, fertility clinics will urge their patients not to
settle for creating one embryo at a time, but to create several and keep extra
embryos frozen for possible future use. In recent years, such practices have led
to the surreal phenomenon of divorcing couples fighting over who has custody of
their frozen embryos, lending new poignancy to the phrase "Our love has gone
cold."

We intend no lack of concern for couples who feel drawn to IVF after years of
wanting to bear children. There are few voids more sorrowful than yearning to
conceive a child with your spouse, only to find month after month that your
bodies will not cooperate in that hope. Sometimes a soul-draining emptiness sets
in, and what normally are joyous events, such as a children's choir singing an
innocent anthem in church, instead provoke tears.

Some couples simply resign themselves to what seems like biological destiny, or
decide that while God has called them to the vocation of marriage, he has not
called them to the usually related vocation of parenthood. Many other couples
follow the heroic course of adopting children or serving as foster parents.
Nevertheless, other couples are so committed to the goal of conceiving children
together that they will go to extraordinary means (and an expense of $40,000 or
more) to conceive.

IVF would not necessarily pose moral dilemmas if it were as simple as
fertilizing one egg with one sperm from a husband and implanting one embryo in
his wife, the mother-to-be. IVF poses grave ethical problems, at least for
prolife Christians, when it involves creating multiple embryos, destroying some
of those embryos because of possible birth defects, or indulging in "fetal
reduction" (destroying some developing children after they are returned to a
woman's body).

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It shouldn't take a bioethical consultant to recognize that destroying embryonic
life in order to create the best possible full-term baby is a dreadful example
of ends justifying means.

The Washington Post's report about 400,000 frozen embryos included revealing
remarks from people with a vested interest in their not becoming full-term
babies. Post reporter Rick Weiss wrote: "Harvard University stem cell scientist
Douglas Melton reacted to the new [frozen embryo] census with frustration.
'These embryos could be put to a number of good research purposes,' he said,
including gaining a better understanding of birth defects and developing
cellular therapies for serious diseases."

Weiss also quoted David Hoffman, a fertility doctor and past president of the
Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology: "None of us really want to hang on
to those embryos in perpetuity."

Would it be too blunt to remind the research community that all human beings
start their lives as embryos? Have we so reduced all human life before birth to
so much raw material, to be mass processed into whatever product best suits our
needs at any given moment?

Protestant Christians have, to date, sometimes made their peace with IVF.
Indeed, the Christian Medical & Dental Associations' House of Delegates decided
in 1983 that IVF "may be morally justified when such a pregnancy takes place in
the context of the marital bond."

We appreciate that CMDA stresses the marital bond, and it further says that
"amniocentesis with possible abortion should not be an expected part of the
clinical protocol."

Nevertheless, we feel more concern than ever that IVF too often sets couples on
a course of parenthood at all costs—not only financially, but also ethically and
spiritually. While the desire for children is God-given and a moral good,
conceiving a child of one's own is not something we are all due. Life in a
fallen world deprives people of many good and worthy things, including their own
lives or the lives of their children (or would-be children).

Those of us who cannot know the joy of children must think with increasing
precision and honesty about whether God has set appropriate limits to our desire
for childbearing. Medical science has progressed to the point of offering us
many ways to bring a child into the world, whether using our own bodies or those
of complete strangers. But what threats might this Promethean offer pose to our
very souls—or, just as important, to the bodies and souls created in vitro?

Article continues below


Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.


RELATED ELSEWHERE



See also today's news report on this topic: "400,000 and Counting | Christians
recoil at the explosive growth of frozen human embryos."

The RAND Corporation's report and the May 8 Washington Post article that broke
the story are both available online.

Christianity Today's Life Ethics archive and the Science Pages of our sister
publication Books & Culture have more perspective on bioethics. For current news
on Fertility and Pregnancy, see Yahoo full coverage.

CT's earlier coverage of frozen embryos and fertility treatments includes:

> Biotech Babies | How far should Christian couples go in the quest for a child
> of their own? (Dec. 7, 1988)

> No Room in the Womb? | Couples with high-risk pregnancies face the 'selective
> reduction' dilemma (Dec. 6, 1999)

> Embryo 'Adoption' Matches Donors and Would-be Parents | 'Snowflake' program is
> only of its kind in dealing with leftover fertilized eggs (Nov. 2, 1999)





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This article is from the July 2003 issue.


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