Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
Thirty-three years ago we for the first time created human life outside of the human body and proved its ultimate viability with the birth of Louise Brown. The world marveled at our amazing ingenuity and success in manipulating the mysterious biological processes, tricking Mother Nature into giving a child to a woman who seemed have been permanently disqualified from receiving such a blessing.
Some ethicists and moral leaders decried the achievement and the ominous ethical issues that had also been born from this amazing event. Summarily dubbed hating, anti-science, anti-progress, backward troglodytes and hypocrites for not celebrating a human life, they were quickly dismissed and ignored, and we have long since completely embraced the amazing technology as good. Louise Brown now has thousands, if not millions, of "siblings-in-science" throughout the world.
Now we can't deny that the lives of these test-tube progeny are an unqualified wonder, and they are no doubt, like most people, good-hearted positive assets for society. But is the process by which they were brought into the world so wonderful? Did the initial critics have a point in decrying the reduction of the miracle of life to a process involving hormone injections, ova harvesting, petri-dish cultures, embryo implantation, and zygote disposal? Is the blessing of children a right we should be allowed to pursue by any means necessary? Should we be allowed to "selectively reduce" the number of fetuses a mother carries because the whole process worked a little better than we wanted it to and because having more than one baby is really just too inconvenient? Should all those unused embryos just be flushed down the toilet, because, well, yeah they're "life" but they're not, you know, LIFE?
Okay you don't have to answer all of that. Let's just focus on this question, have we become so enamored with the ingeniousness of technology, which allows us to fulfill desires that were formerly impossible, and makes the consequences of doing so very easy to hide or ignore, that we let it become our crafty little henchman to do the dirty work we would never otherwise consider or condone?
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Comments :
Dec '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
Hey, you get a womb with a view ;-)
May '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
It's the new tower of Babel.
Edited on Aug 19, 2011 at 7:58amJan '11
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
See, this is what I'm talking about, without the technology of the web and this site, Foxman would never be able to inflict this type of thing on so many of us. ;)
Jul '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
"The ethics of IVF and fertility treatments receive all too little attention, Diane. It's shocking how blithely the moral questions that arise get ignored or dismissed out of hand because we now embrace some notion of the inherent goodness of scientific breakthroughs. Reproductive technology is progress! Progress, by definition, is good, right?
With our Court giving official blessing to the notion that life isn't really life until almost 6 months, that there is a calendar-based sliding scale which determines what degree of divine judgement we are allowed to arrogate to ourselves concerning the miracle of life, what need do we have to consider the actual nature of what we create and destroy?
We reduce life to a series of mechanistic processes which, upon unlocking their secrets, become subject to us, and our dominion expands with dizzying acceleration. We ironically grow in arrogance and self-regard of our brilliance despite the fact that behind the drive to chip away at the mysteries of human existence lies the idea that our nature is simply physical and ultimately mundane and purposeless. And we come to believe that there is nothing wonderful or worthwhile to our existence at all."
May '11
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
There is a chilling article in the New York Times Magazine about families who "reduce" twins to a singleton because one or both parents don't want to deal with twins. While the author does not seem to be anti-abortion, she also is clearly not entirely comfortable with twin reductions either. She notes that "The ability of women to control their fertility has created all kinds of welcome choices"; but killing one of two children in the womb is often viewed as just one more "choice" that people make in pursuit of a desired lifestyle. While I do not mean to be insensitive to couples who are struggling with infertility, these technologies reduce children to a means to achieving whatever we want to achieve, and therefore to a thing to be discarded when inconvenient.
May '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
Man has created a million ways to kill, why worry about the one that helps creates a normal, healthy baby?
There's a lot more immoral about genetic tinkering like the recent news of altered chicken eggs developing chicks with snouts instead of beaks.
Jul '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
Mrs. Rahe,
Here's an excellent post regarding Yer comment.
May '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
EJHill: Man has created a million ways to kill, why worry about the one that helps creates a normal, healthy baby?
There's a lot more immoral about genetic tinkering like the recent news of altered chicken eggs developing chicks with snouts instead of beaks. · Aug 19 at 7:54am
That worse immoralities persist is no good reason for tolerating wrong.
Jan '11
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
Great reference. Then God dealt with man's undue self-regard and attempt to encroach upon the domain of the divine by confusing everyone's ability to communicate. How will he check our ambition next? Is God a luddite? I don't think so, but I suspect he's got some type of comeuppance in the works for us.
May '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
katievs
EJHill: Man has created a million ways to kill, why worry about the one that helps creates a normal, healthy baby?
There's a lot more immoral about genetic tinkering like the recent news of altered chicken eggs developing chicks with snouts instead of beaks. · Aug 19 at 7:54am
That worse immoralities persist is no good reason for tolerating wrong. · Aug 19 at 8:01am
This is even more the case when you consider that so many of the evils of the culture of death threatening to overwhelm our society stem from the same hubristic principle, the same "metaphysical impertinence", the same rejection of the "given", the same irreverence toward the mystery of life, the same refusal to let God be God.
Edited on Aug 19, 2011 at 3:08pmJan '11
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
How many babies should you be allowed to kill in order to produce one that lives, EJ? Does the destruction of human embryos and the killing of implanted fetuses the mother considers too inconvenient to rear not count among the millions of ways to kill you mention?
May '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
Let me see. Fertility is a judgment from God? Accept your barrenness as a sign that God thinks you might be unfit to have children?
And if an embryo does not take in the womb after in vitro how is that different than the millions of times a day humans engage in sex that does not result in pregnancy? The failure of the fertilized embryo to attach to the uterine wall is different if fertilization occurred outside of the womb?
Jan '11
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
Whether or not an embryo should be considered a human life isn't a question of fate or a matter of judgement as to what God's divine plan may or may not be. It's a matter of what moral consideration human life deserves and what criteria we use to determine the degree of moral consideration we grant if we choose to differentiate based on stage of life. I'm sure we all agree that an inability to have children is a tragic situation for those who want them, and that people faced with that problem should be allowed to try and overcome it. The question becomes, what are the limits we should respect in that attempt and, again, by what criteria do we establish those limits. If you have ideas about that or answers to those questions, feel free to elaborate on them.
Edited on Aug 19, 2011 at 9:37amJan '11
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
Fertilized eggs that fail to implant or ultimately produce a live birth, whether by natural pregnancy or one produced by IVF, are not a moral conundrum. The problem arises in the fact that IVF produces many embryos that are never given a chance at implantation, and that many embryos that do implant successfully are deliberately killed because the mother doesn't want multiple children. Despite implanting multiple embryos into herself, some mothers choose to play eenie, meenie, minie, moe to kill one or more of her fetuses she doesn't feel like rearing. You see no distinction between those types of embryonic and fetal deaths and ones that occur by natural miscarriage? Really? The intentionality behind the killing involved with artificial forms of fertilization is morally equivalent to the lack of intention when a mother has a miscarriage?
May '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
EJHill
Let me see. Fertility is a judgment from God? Accept your barrenness as a sign that God thinks you might be unfit to have children?
I don't think this way, EJ. I don't even know anyone who does. I have many friends who carry the terrible cross of infertility.
The desire to have a child is beautiful and good. The inability to have a child is a terrible suffering for many.
But a good end doesn't justify an immoral means.
May '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
BThompson
The problem arises in the fact that IVF produces many embryos that are never given a chance at implantation, and that many embryos that do implant successfully are deliberately killed because the mother doesn't want multiple children.
The problem arises earlier than that, IMO. It arises when conception is "manufactured" by technicians in a lab.
There is a lot of great work being done to help infertile couples conceive that doesn't cross that moral boundary. Great and beautiful work.
To me, the distinction between good and bad fertility interventions mirrors the distinction between artificial birth control and Natural Family Planning. Also the distinction between embryonic stem cell research and adult stem cell research.
The need is real; the goal is good. Some means are licit, some are not.
The licit ones are rooted in reverence for life and for God; they work in harmony with nature and natural law.
Edited on Aug 19, 2011 at 10:22amMay '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
My two kids, ages 2 and 5, were conceived through IVF. After 10 years of trying through other means -- we'd get pregnant, and had fetal heartbeat on three occasions, only to see the embryo die in utero -- we felt it was immoral to subject our ova to what were for us the empirical risks of a natural pregnancy. By far the best chance our ova had to survive was by going through a gestational surrogate, and that meant IVF. So we are eternally grateful to our IVF doctors, and to our gestational surrogates, for working with us to make this miracle happen.
We would never have approved of "selective reduction," and to reduce the chance that we'd have multiples (which carry risks to the other embryos), we would only implant two embryos at a time. This was expensive, but offered all our ova the best chance for survival.
May '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
Of course not, because they are life. There are well-established programs for adopting out embryos. Snowflake babies is the term used by one of them.
May '10
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
I should note that my 5 year old and 2 year old are really the same age. In fact, the 2 year old could be older then the 5 year old by a few minutes or seconds, depending on which sperm got to which egg first. The 2 year old spent the first 3 years of his life in a freezer, and you could imagine the confusion that would result if we ignored the convention of age referring to time post-birth.
Apr '11
Re: Survey: Is In Vitro Fertilization a Morally Acceptable Technology?
Ottoman Empire: so you have twins born 3 years apart? Amazing! :-)