Those who objected to IVF (before my time) on the basis that the technology would not be limited to helping infertile, married couples conceive, were laughed off as scare mongers.
My how times have changed. We now have a story of fertile couples using IVF to make embryos for deep freeze because they don’t want to have children–yet–but are worried if they wait, they won’t be able to when they are ready. From the a first person account that reads like a fertility clinic sales brochure:
Then we found another option [than not having children]: a way to postpone parenthood without risking the higher miscarriage and genetic disorder rates that occur in babies conceived from parents older than 35. We did this by undergoing in vitro fertilization and freezing our embryos. Most couples resort to in vitro only after years of trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, a process I think of as Desperation IVF. Instead, we chose to preserve the advantage of our current youth and fertility. I call it Preservation IVF.
They couldn’t afford children but could afford to undergo IVF?
The couple made five embryos and leave open the option of having children the usual way. And then what? If there are some that are no longer needed, toss their “baby blastocysts” in the medical waste bag? Donate them for research? Leave them in limbo?
The article said some of these costs could be paid by health insurance. They certainly should not be if the IVF isn’t to treat infertility but, as here, to faclilitate lifestyle choices.
And that is the bigger point. A lot of what medicine is about today is not health, but fulfillment of personal lifestyle desires. That’s a big deal to which I don’t think we have paid sufficient attention, which, I think, threatens to deprofessionalize medicine. And IVF has been leading the way, often today not about treating infertility at all, but rather, turning child bearing into just another consumer product.
July 6th, 2010 | 5:15 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys and Lisa, Pregnancy Assistant. Pregnancy Assistant said: Using IVF to Delay Parenthood http://bit.ly/9eBvQQ [...]
July 6th, 2010 | 10:54 pm
Wesley: you say: “They couldn’t afford children but could afford to undergo IVF?”
Where in the article does it say that they couldn’t afford children? The couple said they “weren’t ready to be parents” and that it was very important to them that they “be financially stable enough to support them and give them plenty of parenting time.”
By “banking” their embryos they’re able to attain the degree of affluence they need to enable one of them to stay home with the newborn. That seems to me to go a little further than simply “lifestyle” — unless, of course, you have some objection to stay-at-home moms.
You take umbrage at the idea of creating five embryos because you fear one or more of them may never be implanted. Quite the contrary, it’s a wise precaution because implanted embryos may miscarry. It’s also possible that the couple would like to have five children. Ever think of that?
When do you think you’ll be out of your jet lag fog?
July 7th, 2010 | 12:00 am
I think he is not so concerned about the practice as he is about the principle……..
The pro-life attitude is that children should come when they do. The turning point isn’t when the suction pump is turned on, it’s when conception is treated like placing an order…….
July 7th, 2010 | 1:31 am
HistoryWriter: Wesley is simply irritated that the unborn/embryos are used as a medical product.
It’s not unusual or unethical to delay having children before you are on a solid financial basis. But using IVF to create embryos, put them in a freezer and later decide if they are worthy of birth and love is using these human beings instrumentally.
July 7th, 2010 | 5:58 am
Off-topic, but I think this news will interest you:
“Blood drawn with a simple needle stick can be coaxed into producing stem cells that may have the ability to form any type of tissue in the body, three independent papers report in the July 2 Cell Stem Cell. The new technique will allow scientists to tap a large, readily available source of personalized stem cells.”
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/60751/title/Stem_cells_from_blood_a_huge_milestone
July 7th, 2010 | 2:46 pm
I don’t see why this is a problem. Whatever reasons people choose to use IVF, that’s their personal business, no one else’s. I think the real problem is that there are too many busy bodies sticking their noses into other people’s personal affairs.
July 7th, 2010 | 3:27 pm
The issue of IVF is a big deal since it dehumanizes individuals into commodities that can be “bought” or “disposed of” at the whim of another. Whether it be their parents or someone else, the issue comes down to that IVF treats the unborn in a materialistic manner by using methods of intentional manufacturing of children rather than accepting children as a gift.
July 7th, 2010 | 11:40 pm
Megan, your point about IVF manufacturing children is why I think it lays the groundwork for cloning to reproduce children. If we can design kids by IVF, weed out the ones we don’t want with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and perhaps selective abortion to reduce the litter if too many survive implantation, it’s tough to say no to cloning to manufacture the type of children we want. I’m not against the children from IVF. Our means of creation doesn’t determine our humanity, worth or human exceptionalism, but it sure makes us look at children the way you say it does.
July 8th, 2010 | 2:08 am
Don, funny you should mention it, but we already do selective abortions when a woman has too many fetuses ‘take’ when implanted through IVF. Just google it, and you’ll see what I mean. Oh, and too many is counted as 2 or 3 instead of 1 in some cases.
July 8th, 2010 | 12:48 pm
There does seem to be quite a variety of opinion here, so lets see if I’ve gotten it all straight:
Don says “our means of creation doesn’t determine our humanity, worth or human exceptionalism.” He is essentially saying that our “humanity” resides in our DNA rather than in the way we got here. No problem with that. It’s a sensible, broadminded attitude — even if it encompasses both IVF and cloning.
Megan, on the other hand, seems to believe that creating children in any but the old hometown way “dehumanizes” them into “commodities.” It’s unclear by that whether she means that they actually become something less than human as a result of IVF, or that some people may regard them as such. That’s an important distinction, and one that’s worthy of clarification, since you might infer from it that any person conceived in any but the prescribed manner is a non-person. By that standard rape becomes a superior means of conception to IVF.
Then there’s the idea of children as a “gift” (donor unspecified). That has troubling implications: gifts are material things (sometimes attributes, such as “a gift for music”) but her statement evokes an image of a Bloomingdale’s spring ad that says “We’re carrying a new line of babies in all the trendy colors and styles. Major credit cards accepted.” By applying the Megan principle that “any way but the RIGHT way makes you into a non-person,” it would stand to reason that ONLY children produced by IVF or cloning (or by other “artificial” methods as yet undiscovered) are sufficiently dehumanized to sink to the level of material things like “gifts.” Let’s see: “How about a PlayStation, a new bike and a couple of IVF babies for Christmas….?”
lzzrdgrrl, however, says “[t]he pro-life attitude is that children should come when they do.” I think that’s pretty much self-evident, as I have yet to see any babies come when they don’t.
Did I miss anything?
HW
July 8th, 2010 | 5:49 pm
HistoryWriter, they’re both right: it dehumanizes everyone when we allow people to be made to order and bought and sold. We all become commodities and dehumanized, even if we were created through marital sex, because we are all humans equal in dignity and humanity based on our being born from humans, and yet we are being created by teams of experts for money instead of by a man and a woman for love.
July 8th, 2010 | 11:06 pm
Katie, yes, selective reduction abortions have been done for some time now. Very sad. I have an MD friend who was going to go through IVF. He said he and his wife were in the process just before trying to create children in the lab dish when all of the sudden it hit him “what will I tell them when they ask about my sibblings?” That stopped it for them. I wonder what kind of answers parents will give to that kind of question to children who survived the selective abortion process? That kind of question would be nonsense to the personhood theorist, but I don’t think it would be to most people, or at least to a substantial portion of our society.
July 9th, 2010 | 6:02 am
Don: About your MD friend’s decision to scrap IVF, why would a child conceived by IVF ask that question at all unless his/her parents made a point of telling them about it? And why would/should they? There would be no differences between them and their siblings (assuming there were others) that would prompt the question in the first place. What did his wife think about it?
July 9th, 2010 | 11:52 am
HW: I hope I read you right. I think you are asking why would the child born of IVF ask about other sibblings born by natural means as if comparing him or herself with children conceived that way? If not, then what follows is the wrong answer. If that’s what you were commenting on, I would say that my doctor friend was talking about the the child’s/childrens’ sibblings created/concieved by IVF who were screened out by pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. I didn’t mean to suggest there was any question about other children born by natural means. I think that’s what you meant.
I think his/their thought was that the child would somehow find out that he or she were created by IVF, would find out that they screen out the “undesireable/less perfect/less preffered” ones, and would ask what happened to his or her sibblings who were screened out? Those are the sibblings he was speaking of to me, the IVF sibblings screen out and didn’t make it to implantation-not sibblings born of natural means. I hope I read you right. Obviously the answer would be that those IVF sibblings would have been killed and he or she was chosen because of his or her preferred qualities/stock. So that was the question that stopped both of them, both MDs.
They both believe that no matter how human beings come into existence, they have inherent and inviolable dignity and a right to life, so they would not think they had any less dignity if born by IVF.
To people who do not believe in the inherent dignity of each human being and hold to a more functionalist-personhood theory or gradualist theory of human value in regards to human rights and the right to life, this is probably nonsense. They see genetic material. We see that little human embryo as one of us.
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