IVF

A few years ago I went shopping for a brand new house.  Every model home I visited, regardless of the builder, had a gigantic master suite with a spa-like enormous bathroom where every morning you could cartwheel your way to the shower and back flip to the toilet.  Down the hall, placed almost like an afterthought, were 3 or 4 tiny little bedrooms whose total square feet might add up to the space provided in the palatial master suite.

After the 5th house or so, I realized this was an indicator that society's values had shifted.  Builders were building what the buyer wanted, which was clearly parental desire and comfort at the child's expense.  I also knew it wasn't a good sign.

These days it is all about what parents want, not about what is best for the children.  There is nowhere where this attitude is more apparent than in the assisted reproduction industry.  We all heard of the Octomom, but it goes so much deeper than that.  In vitro fertilization, better known as IVF, is not just about infertility anymore, it is about human manufacturing to specifications.

Recently, two stories have been in the news that illustrate my point.  Gillian and Paul St. Lawrence, both fertile and in their 30's, have used IVF to create 5 embryos.  They have frozen their 5 offspring until it is more convenient for them to raise children.  From the Washington Post:

Our five frozen embryos, which we call our baby blastocysts, will remain in storage until we are ready to use them. Since study after study has indicated that the age of the uterus at the time the embryo is implanted is almost irrelevant to the success rate of achieving a healthy baby, we can wait 10 or 15 years: The chief consideration may well be how old I want to be when I'm raising a teenager.

Upon hearing this, my mother-in-law was quick to ask: "You don't have to wait until you are 40 to use the embryos, right?" No, we do not. We can choose to use them any time. And, of course, my husband and I are still free to have babies the old-fashioned way. We still have all the options we had prior to this project -- but now we have some insurance against future infertility.

Five human lives have been created and put in "storage" until they are ready to "use" as the St. Lawrence's "project" to provide themselves "insurance."  (Her words not mine.)  There was a time we used "gift" and "blessing" when referring to children but in this Brave New World, "project" and "insurance" are more appropriate.  IVF is now being used for human manufacturing to specifications.  In this case, ordered with delayed delivery.

What is particularly chilling (no pun intended) is Gillian's description of how she weighed the pros and cons of freezing her offspring as if she was deciding whether the lasagna she made the night before would freeze well enough to still taste good in a few months.

The second story is about an Australian couple who are complaining that they have to travel all the way to Thailand to use IVF to have a daughter.  They have 3 healthy boys already (I assume made the old fashioned way) and want to use IVF and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to insure they have a girl.  The problem is Australia does not allow IVF and PGD for sex selection.  From the Herald Sun:

A MELBOURNE mum is so desperate to have a daughter she is traveling to Thailand so she can choose the sex of her next baby, frustrated at Australian medical authorities as they drag their feet over the issue.

Already blessed with three boys - aged 5, 4 and 1 - the 36-year-old and her husband say they have been forced to sidestep Australian laws because they cannot wait for federal medical authorities to decide if they will overturn their ban on the practice.

"At this point I would do anything to have a daughter," she said.

"It is an ethical thing we have weighed up. It hasn't been a decision taken lightly but it is one we feel we have reached and we are happy with.

"I wouldn't trade my sons for a million daughters - this is not about my sons. It is about me and my husband wanting a daughter.

At least she is honest.  This is not about loving and caring for a girl, it is about her and her husband "wanting a daughter."  There is a difference.  If loving and caring for a girl was the goal, then adoption would certainly fit the bill.  But when it is about insuring you get a genetically related female, then human manufacturing to specifications is the answer.

This woman insists it is not about her sons, but the reality of IVF and PGD is that she will create embryonic sons that she will in fact "trade" to get the embryonic daughter.  She will create male offspring in the process, the clinic will just throw them out in favor of the females.

The Catholic Church had always been against IVF, even in cases of infertility.  Once you create life outside the body, it naturally turns into the manufacturing of humans.  We are meant to be begotten not made.  And certainly not made to specifications.  I think these two cases illustrate the wisdom of the Church.

In the end, I never bought a new house.  I stayed in my solidly-built 1940s bungalow where the bedrooms are nearly all the same size and there is no master bath.  Now that I think about it, they didn't have IVF in the 1940s...

Scientists have discovered that the DNA of babies conceived through IVF differs from that of other children, putting them at greater risk of diseases such as diabetes and obesity later in life....

The changes are not in the genes themselves but in the mechanism that switches them on and off, the study of which is known as epigenetics.

“These epigenetic differences have the potential to affect embryonic development and foetal growth, as well as influencing long-term patterns of gene expression associated with increased risk of many human diseases,” said Professor Carmen Sapienza, a geneticist at Temple University in Philadelphia, who jointly led the research....

In their findings, published in the Human Molecular Genetics journal, Sapienza and his colleagues took blood samples from the placenta and umbilical cords of 10 IVF children and 13 children who were naturally conceived.

They studied the DNA of cells taken from the blood to see if there were differences in the level of methylation. This is the process by which molecules known as methyl groups are attached to genes to shut them down when they are not needed.

The results showed that the level of methylation in the cells taken from IVF babies was significantly lower — implying that some genes were becoming active at the wrong times.

“We have shown that in vitro conception is associated with differences in gene methylation and that some of these differences may affect gene expression,” said Sapienza.

Evidence shows that IVF causes epigenetic changes.  Most people assume that these changes are not inherited.  Watching Ghost in Your Genes, a NOVA special on epigenetics, I realized that these epigenetic changes caused by IVF maybe inherited by subsequent generations. 

Of course, we will not know for sure until IVF children age and have their own children, but evidence suggests that epigenetic changes are not wiped out in offspring but are inherited from one generation to the next.  Mouse studies have shown that epigenetic changes in mice are inherited by the following generation.  In the following video, Wolf Reik describes epigenetic changes in IVF embryos and his discovery that the epigenetic changes of his mice were inherited:

Further on in Ghost in Your Genes, scientists discuss how famine in grandparents affected the life span of grandchildren in a remote area of northern Sweden and how a single exposure of a pregnant rat to a toxin caused epigenetic changes that were seen 4 generations later.

The upshot? Conceiving your children in a dish may not just affect them, but your grandchildren and possibly your great-grandchildren as well.

For more information on epigenetics watch the entire Ghost in Your Genes special.  Part 1, Part 2, Part 4 and Part 5.

Just when I think the infertility industry cannot make women's bodies more of a commodity to be bought and sold, they surprise me.  This time its a raffle.  From Chattabox.com:

A fertility clinic in London is holding a raffle for a free human egg and IVF procedure to attract patients who might be interested in treatments.

The Genetics & IVF Institute (GIVF) is an IVF clinic that uses specific profiling, such as race, health, and educational background of the donor, when offering the egg.

They are also charge £13,000 for an egg and treatments in the US.

The clinic takes advantage of American law, which allows women to be paid $10,000 per egg given, which is illegal in the UK.

The company profiles donors; overweight woman and smokers are rejected immediately, as are women who are deigned too unattractive.

All women must also have university degrees.

The raffle, which will be held by the company on Wednesday, is already attracting a great deal of attention all over the country.

I never thought eugenics and gambling would ever go together, but they sure have proved me wrong.

Just another way the lab is not like the womb.  From Business Week:

Hoping to improve pregnancy rates, researchers try to simulate motion of the human body

Scientists say they boosted the success of in vitro fertilization in mice by gently rocking embryos before implanting them into the womb.

No evidence yet proves that the same technique would work with human embryos, but authors of a new study hope it might do just that.

"By making the cells feel more at home, we get better cells, which is key to having better infertility treatment," said study co-author Shu Takayama, an associate professor in the University of Michigan's department of biomedical engineering.

The idea of the research is to mimic the motion that an embryo feels traveling through the fallopian tube to the uterus. Human embryos created with the assistance of in vitro fertilization don't get the benefit of such exposure.

That is the headline in this Times UK article about the genetic differences of children conceived through IVF.  Although this is not news (I have been talking about this for nearly 5 years) it is noteworthy because it talks about the mechanisms by which children of IVF are at risk.  The sequence of DNA in IVF children is not the problem.  Genetics is not just about the genes you have, but what genes are turned on.  Our cells regulate the turning on and off of genes by methylation.  Methylation is the process where a methyl group is added to the DNA strand that prevents the gene from being expressed.  

The proper methylation of genes to turn them on and off begins at conception.  Researchers have found that being conceived in a lab and not in a womb affects the methylation process.  Scientists at Temple University discovered that the DNA of children of IVF has less methylation that children conceived naturally.  This means that their genes are not being activated at the right times or in the right manner which puts them at risk for diseases such as diabetes.  From the Times article:

Scientists have discovered that the DNA of babies conceived through IVF differs from that of other children, putting them at greater risk of diseases such as diabetes and obesity later in life....

The changes are not in the genes themselves but in the mechanism that switches them on and off, the study of which is known as epigenetics.

“These epigenetic differences have the potential to affect embyronic development and foetal growth, as well as influencing long-term patterns of gene expression associated with increased risk of many human diseases,” said Professor Carmen Sapienza, a geneticist at Temple University in Philadelphia, who jointly led the research....

In their findings, published in the Human Molecular Genetics journal, Sapienza and his colleagues took blood samples from the placenta and umbilical cords of 10 IVF children and 13 children who were naturally conceived.

They studied the DNA of cells taken from the blood to see if there were differences in the level of methylation. This is the process by which molecules known as methyl groups are attached to genes to shut them down when they are not needed.

The results showed that the level of methylation in the cells taken from IVF babies was significantly lower — implying that some genes were becoming active at the wrong times.

“We have shown that in vitro conception is associated with differences in gene methylation and that some of these differences may affect gene expression,” said Sapienza.

What I am dying to know is why this was not studied BEFORE IVF became a common place occurrence.  And if simple IVF can effect methylation, I cannot even imagine what happens to embryos that are put through preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) where one of their 8 cells are plucked out and tested.

I am reminded of this article from the New York Times in which one IVF doc admits he is never really asked about what in vitro fertilization meant for the health of the resulting children by either potential parents or other doctors:

Richard G. Rawlins, who directs the in vitro fertilization and assisted reproduction laboratories at the Rush Centers for Advanced Reproductive Care in Chicago, said that when he spoke to patients he never heard questions about growing embryos in the laboratory and the possible consequences.

“I have never had a patient ask me anything” about it, he said, adding, “For that matter, not many doctors have ever asked, either.”

The same New York Times article talks about how IVF clinics change the broth they grow their embryos in and how that may effect gene expression.  Read the following and tell that IVF is not human manufacture:

Why, researchers ask, would growing embryos in petri dishes elicit changes in gene expression? And if there are changes, could they alter the laboratory conditions so those gene expression changes do not occur?

One place to look might be the broth, known as the culture medium, in which embryos grow. From the start of IVF, scientists knew that the composition of the broth affected how quickly embryos grew, Dr. Rawlins said. And they knew that embryos, both animal and human, grew much more slowly in the lab than they did in the body.

One thing the culture medium provides is chemicals that can be used to add methyl groups to genes. The presence, or absence, of the methyl groups can control whether genes are active or not, a process known as epigenetics. Epigenetic changes not only cause rare disorders like Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome but also are associated with low-birth-weight babies and an increased risk of a variety of cancers. That does not mean that growing embryos in petri dishes will have such effects, but it does raise questions about what is known about the procedure....

But figuring out what, if anything, in the culture medium might adversely affect embryo growth and development may not be easy, Dr. Feinberg said.

Dr. Ginsburg said the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology discussed whether to ask IVF centers to report what media they were using to grow their embryos. But, she said, “programs use multiple media, and it is very common for programs to switch from one media to another.”

The New York Times piece goes on to describe the problems that IVF mice have compared to their naturally conceived counterparts:

If mouse embryos are even close to reflecting what can happen with humans, then there is no question that gene expression can be altered by growing embryos in a laboratory, Dr. Schultz says.

He and several others spent years asking whether there were gene expression changes in mouse embryos that are grown in the laboratory — there are — and whether they could see behavioral changes in the animals. They did.

For example, the investigators gave mice a test that required remembering the location of a platform hidden by opaque water. The IVF mice had no trouble learning where the platform was, but were more likely to forget what they had learned, Dr. Schultz found.

In another test, which measured a fear response when mice are in the open, IVF mice lacked the normal caution and fear that non-IVF mice are born with.

“They are changes,” Dr. Schultz said, of the test results. “And the only difference is that they were cultured,” meaning that the mice started out as embryos in a petri dish.

Along with the behavioral changes were changes in the methylation of genes — epigenetic changes, Dr. Schultz reports. “I am suspicious that manipulation and culturing of embryos is a contributing factor,” he adds.

Unfortunately, I do not have any hope that the fertility industry will check itself and say, "Hey maybe we should stop until we know what in vitro conception means in the long term."  There is too much money to be made off desperate and heart broken couples.  And there is always those ever dominating "reproductive rights" that are somehow, according to Roe vs. Wade, in the Constitution but not actually in the Constitution.

I think it might take a generation of aging IVF kids who have specific and unforeseen health problems to start suing the clinics in which they were conceived to ever bring about change in the fertility industry.

Nice to see some sense in Hollywood.  It would be nice if her objections were more articulate, but I am happy to see that she is speaking from her heart; exactly where the objections to IVF should come from.  From Digital Spy:

Jennifer Lopez has revealed that she turned down the option of IVF treatment when she and husband Marc Anthony were trying to conceive.

The singer, who gave birth to twins Max and Emme in February 2008, has now said that she was determined to have children the "traditional" way.

Speaking to Elle, Lopez explained: "When it comes to family and relationships, I'm quite traditional. Just because of the way I was raised.

"And I also believe in God and I have a lot of faith in that, so I just felt like you don't mess with things like that."

She added: "I guess deep down I really felt like either this is not going to happen for me or it is. You know what I mean? And if it is, it will. And if it's not, it's not going to."

Case in point: this response to a reader at CatholicInsight.com .  Eric Rose asked John B. Shea MD. FRCP the following question:

I was brought up Catholic, but I have a question:  If two married people cannot bear children of their own, the Catholic Church would rather see that couple fruitless than have IVF performed?

This is a very common sentiment among Catholics and other pro-lifers.  Dr. Shea does a great job of explaining the process of IVF:

Infertile couples sometimes resort to IVF in order to conceive a child. IVF is a laboratory technique by which human embryos are conceived in a petri dish which contains a culture medium. The woman is given hormones which stimulate her ovaries to produce up to 30 or more oocytes (ova). These are retrieved by inserting a needle into the ovaries via the vagina with ultrasound guidance. These oocytes are mixed with sperm. The sperm is obtained by masturbation and is usually donated by the husband. If the husband is infertile, however, the sperm may be obtained from another man. If the woman is infertile, likewise, the oocytes may be obtained from another woman, whose ovaries have been similarly stimulated. The embryos thus conceived are usually allowed to grow up to the four to eight cell stage over three to four days, at which time some of the embryos are implanted in the woman’s uterus.

I think the problem with the answer comes in the part where Dr. Shea explains why the Church finds IVF immoral.  His answer is very accurate.  The problem I believe is that he uses the same language that leaves many Catholics scratching their heads:

The Church also teaches that from the moral point of view a truly responsible procreation vis-a –vis the unborn child must be the fruit of marriage.  

Pope Paul V1 has taught that there is an “inseparable connection, willed by God, and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning.”

IVF violates the rights of the child: it deprives him of his filial relationship with his parental origins and can hinder the maturing of his personality. It objectively deprives conjugal fruitfulness of its unity and integrity; it brings about and manifests a rupture between genetic parenthood, gestational parenthood, and responsibility for upbringing. This threat to the unity and stability of the family is a source of dissension, disorder, and injustice in the whole of social life.

I have used this kind of language in the talks I have given and most people just look at me with blank stares.  I have to admit that it even makes my eyes glass over.  And next to the breaking hearts of infertile couples, this language, I hate to say, just sounds hollow and elitist.

While less academic, I like to explain Church teaching on IVF this way:

1.  The Church teaches that all life from the very beginning, meaning conception, deserves dignity and respect.

2.  The Church also teaches that human life should be begotten not made as a result of the sexual union of a husband and a wife.

3.  This is because there is no more loving and safe place to be conceived than in a mother's womb as the result of a specific act of love.

4.  IVF is immoral for many reasons, but foremost because it creates human life in a dish.  This life is made by a stranger, a lab technician, not a mother and a father.  The dish is a cold and dangerous place, devoid of love.  Human embryos made in labs are in a precarious position.  IVF embryos are at greater risk of genetic disease.  These embryos may make it into a mother's womb where they belong.  But, they often end up in the deep freeze, or in the hands of researchers to be ripped apart.  They may be abandoned or even end up in the womb of another woman by accident.  IVF embryos are, in many states, considered to be property.  More and more, they are viewed by society as valueless biological material.

5.  As a result, creating life outside the body, outside the act of love between a husband and wife does not uphold the dignity inherent in each of us from the moment we are conceived.

While Dr. Shea's response is accurate and appropriate, I believe it does not drive home that we all deserve to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect at every stage of life and IVF, by creating embryos in a lab, does not treat all human life with respect.  Instead, it puts these little lives at risk and undervalues their worth.  IVF, even though it can give infertile couples the children they so desperately want, is immoral because of how it treats human life at its earliest and most vulnerable.

DEVOTED Lisa Wilkinson is set to achieve her dream of starting a family with her husband - 16 months after his death.

Lisa and hubby Gareth had just got engaged when he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of bone cancer.

They married in 2006, and Gareth died less than two years later at the age of just 27.

But Gareth, a hospital care assistant, had some of his sperm frozen before undergoing chemotherapy - and Lisa, 27, has now been given permission to start IVF treatment.

For the life of me I cannot understand why someone would willingly create a child that will never get to know his father.  Why would anyone purposefully doom a child to a life without a daddy?  Ahhhh here it is:

"This is the closest I can get to having Gareth back...Gareth's family back me completely as I will be giving his mum her first grandchild." [says Lisa]

I am assuming this story is meant to make you all warm and fuzzy inside.  It leaves me cold and angry.  Why?  Because I am actually thinking of the child that will result and how this child will be forced to live a life without ever knowing his father.  Of course, lots of children grow up without a parent that has passed away.  But why would you CHOOSE that kind of life for them?  Because, this child will be a means to an end.  A way to fill the gap left behind behind by this man's death. 

And what bureaucrat at the UK's National Health Service thought this would be a good idea?  How far have we come that something like this is considered health care?  Must someone point out that this woman isn't even infertile.  She is just missing her husband.

This is why children are meant to be begotten not made.  They are supposed to be gifts in and of themselves.  They should not be created in a dish as a substitute to sooth the grief of a widow and her in-laws.

Audra Murray of Newton has two children under 2 years old and two frozen embryos and says she’s struggling to decide what to do with her spares, a difficulty she hadn’t anticipated during her treatment. “When pregnancy test after pregnancy test has failed, you don’t feel like you can get pregnant and you’re trying to, and watching your bank account draining, you’re not concerned about the embryos.

“But then you have kids,” she says, “and the embryos seem like kids.”

Oh the truth is so pesky.  And here is Linda, who calls herself "Catholic, but pro-choice," on her "left-overs":

“I had friends and family tell me, ‘Oh, throw them away,’ ” Linda recalls. “I couldn’t. Our children were in the same batch. I’d look at them and think, ‘Wow, if someone had grabbed a different straw, our children would still be sitting there.’ ”

What is so astonishing is the new ways in which parents are now dealing with this very difficult moral dilemma.  Traditionally, there have been three options for parents: 1. Donate the embryos to research, 2. Donate embryos to another infertile couple to adopt, or 3. throw them in the biohazard waste.

Apparently none of these choices suits parents who instinctively know these are their children.  They do not like the idea of offering them up to science, nor the thought of them being thrown out with the trash.  They like the idea of another couple raising their children even less.  So some parents are requesting "disposal ceremonies" or what this article calls "compassionate transfers":

While the nature of embryos remains a source of political controversy, some patients seek resolution to their dilemma in a way that suggests they see embryos neither as life nor as not-life. Lyerly’s 2007 survey discovered that patients were eager for a disposal ceremony, something akin to a funeral for their thawed cells. The survey also indicated significant interest in what Resolve has begun to call “compassionate transfer” -- embryo transfer procedures that would not result in pregnancy. This can take several forms. Boston IVF reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Alison Zimon says she hasn’t performed the procedure, but she has heard of patients asking to have extra thawed embryos placed in the vagina, where it is impossible for them to implant and grow, instead of in the uterus. Dr. Joseph Hill, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Fertility Centers of New England, estimates that of all the patients who come back after a successful first pregnancy to use their frozen embryos, a tiny minority aren’t really trying to get pregnant again. Sometimes they will wait until near menopause before they return for the transfer; some refuse the hormones that are typically used to help the embryo implant.

So some parents want something akin to a funeral for their embryos or they wait till they know it is unlikely that they can get pregnant again and have the embryos implanted.  Or they refuse the hormones that would make the implantation successful.

These requests are a symptom of what parents know to be the truth.  That IVF embryos are not just human life, but they are life that has value.

I do not know what the Catholic Church would say to these practices since they have yet to rule on the whether embryo adoption is moral.  Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, suggests that aside from parents taking responsibility and implanting all their embryos with the intent of getting pregnant, the only moral thing to do with "left-over" IVF embryos is nothing.  Fr. Tad states:

In my opinion, parents have an obligation to care for their children in this way [paying for them to be kept frozen in their storage tanks] until some other option becomes available in the future (maybe a sophisticated "embryo incubator" or "artificial womb" of some kind), or until there is a reasonable certainty that they have died on their own from decay or "freezer burn," which may occur whenever frozen embryos are stored for extended periods.

I do know the Catholic Church would remind these couples that this is a choice that never should have to be made.  These embryos should never have been mass produced in a laboratory in the first place. 

What is most obvious is that infertile couples are not thinking about the consequences of producing extra embryos with IVF.  They are then left with a moral dilemma no parent should have to face.  It is critical that Catholics, religious and lay alike, remind infertile couples of this impending dilemma BEFORE they get swept up in the IVF machine.  It is not politically correct, and they may never speak to you again, but it is so very necessary.

I am reminded of the time I was approached by a woman after a talk I gave about stem cell research and cloning where I exposed this dark-side of IVF.  This woman was hopping mad.  She said that IVF "was the ONLY way her son could have a child!"  She asked what business the Church had telling her that she cannot have grandchildren.  My response must have come straight from God, because I had no idea it was about to come out of my mouth.  I said, "How do you feel about having grandchildren on ice?" 

At that moment she understood. 

From IVFNewsDirect.com:

Several studies have cautioned that children conceived using assisted reproduction technologies (ART) may be at an elevated risk of developing genetic disorders, including retinoblastoma, the most common pediatric intraocular tumor. Now, in a nationwide study conducted from 1995 to 2007, Danish researchers have reported an enhanced risk of retinoblastoma in IVF-conceived children. The study, an extension of an earlier one performed by the same team of Danish researchers during 1995 to 2002, has been published in the online edition of Human Reproduction.

A couple in Ohio were recently told that the child they were carrying was not theirs.  The IVF clinic screwed up and implanted the embryo of another couple.  From the UK Mail Online:

A pregnant mother will have to give birth to another couple's baby after a blunder by an IVF clinic.

Carolyn Savage had the wrong embryos implanted into her and will have to give the boy up to his biological parents as soon as he is born.

Yesterday Mrs Savage, 40, who was expecting her fourth child with husband Sean, said: 'The hardest part is going to be the delivery. I remember communicating with the [unnamed] mother of this child as to what I was envisioning and hoping for.

'I said, "We want a moment to say hello, and goodbye".

'In the beginning we were really scared of that moment and it is still scary. We are trying to mentally frame it in a positive way and look at it as a gift for this family that eight months ago we didn't know.

'I think that is the only way we'll get through it.'

The Savages decided not to abort the child.  Unlike another recent case where a woman aborted another couple's last IVF embryo after she found out about the mistake. 

What a heart breaking situation that should never have come to pass.  This not only will devastate Carolyn and Sean Savage but also their three other children who will have to witness their mother come home from the hospital without what they believed was their sibling.  My prayers are with the Savages and the other couple who are blessed that Carolyn Savage did not choose to abort because of her religious beliefs.

What I find so infuriating are the comments on this story.  Anyone who points out that IVF is unnatural is an insensitive hate monger.  Many comments suggest that infertility is no different than having cancer and if we treat cancer then we should treat infertility.  But treating cancer does not require creating human beings in a dish, then freezing and thawing them, or worse throwing them in the trash or donating them to research. 

Of course we should treat infertility, but to a point.  Treatment of infertility that treats the underlying cause and allows natural conception to take place is good.  But producing human beings in a laboratory to be treated like a commodity is not  simply treating infertility.  It is manufacturing human beings as a means to an end.

Which brings me to the end: children at any cost.  I read "Not Doing it for the Kids" by atheist philosopher Julian Baggini and felt it spoke directly to this social phenomenon that we must have biologically related children anyway possible.  Baggini is speaking of choosing not to have children but his words speak directly to desperate infertile couples:

The child-free life can be great. Why is it almost always presented as second-best, cold and empty?

The goods of the childless life reflect something very important about the good life for everyone. Humans have the capacity to rise above the biological imperative to reproduce. That we do not place the highest value on passing on our genes is part of what makes us different and, yes, in some sense superior to our fellow animals. Yet society does not celebrate our freedom to do this. Reproducing is still seen as the healthy norm, "failing" to do as an aberration. If many more of us do not have grandchildren, then perhaps we will make it clearer that sexual reproduction may be the meaning of animal life, but it sure ain't the best or only reason for humans to get up in the morning: refreshed, after a night uninterrupted by the cries of little angels.

I know this sounds insensitive.  Call me insensitive if you want.  I can take it.  Because I believe what is more insensitive is wanting a biologically related child so badly that you are willing to have a technician make many more than you will ever need in a petri dish and leaving some of them to an uncertain fate in the deep freeze or in the hands of a stem cell researcher or even in the womb of some other woman.

Hat Tips: Epiphenom and Reflections of a Paralytic

While celebrities have been making a habit of going to Africa to adopt children, couples looking to conceive through in vitro fertilization (IVF) may soon be journeying there as well. That’s because Sudan and Egypt will be the first countries where the Low Cost IVF Foundation (LCIF) and the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) establish their clinics to provide IVF at rock-bottom prices. Cheap IVF is another sign of how powerful technology is spreading and gaining momentum by being adopted by the masses. ESHRE will aim for a $360 price tag while LCIF could go lower than $300.

With prices in industrialized nations in the tens of thousands (US average is $12,000), how do the Low Cost IVF Foundation (LCIF) and the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) plan on offering IVF for a few hundred?  By cutting out all the bells and whistles.

First, they will not use the Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) to stimulate ovaries into producing 10 or so eggs.  FSH is too expensive at thousands of dollars per dose. Instead they will be using Clomiphene which stimulates the pituitary into producing its own FSH.  Clomiphene is only $11 and results in less eggs produced and may mean more attempts at egg retrieval.

There will be no freezing of embryos in low cost IVF.  The use of Clomiphene means less eggs produced which means less embryos produced which means that in low cost IVF there may not be any "left-over" embryos to freeze.  It could also mean that any left-over embryos would be immediately donated to research or thrown in the trash.

Instead of incubating embryos in expensive incubators, low cost IVF may use a woman's own body:

INVO Bioscience, based in Massachusetts, has an alternative method: use the mother’s own body heat. Their INVOcell product is a capsule made to incubate embryos within the vagina and only costs $85 in Africa (about $185 in the EU). INVOcell is still pretty new but has had about 20 successes (out of 85 trials).

Sounds gross, but it is sure a lot closer to the way God intended us to begin our lives than in an expensive piece of lab equipment.

Now for my analysis of this announcement.  Some of the aspects, like the non-freezing of embryos (as long as they aren't thrown away or donated to research) are appealing.  But the big picture has my stomach churning a bit. 

First, if the Low Cost IVF Foundation (LCIF) and the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) can offer IVF for $360 dollars in what appears to be a more natural approach (less eggs, less embryos and natural body heat incubation), why is the the fertility industry in the United States charging $12,000?  Are the fertility doctors in the US like those car mechanics that take advantage of people who just do not know anything about cars? 

I know you say that higher cost IVF has better success rates, but at what cost.  You could do 33 rounds at the $360 15% success rate IVF for the same price of 1 round of the 35% success rate.  Is the fertility industry duping heartbroken couples to fork over their hard earned thousands just to boost their success rates? 

Whatever the reason, low cost IVF is going to make IVF more ubiquitous.  As Singularity Hub points out:

In short, no matter where you live chances are that this work will put IVF at your disposal in an unprecedented way.

This is bad.  We need to treat human beings less like products of manufacture not more. 

Which brings me to this contradiction: I thought the progressive view was to promote abortion and contraception into third world countries to get them to STOP reproducing, STOP contributing to poverty and STOP overpopulating the world.  And now there is this foundation that is doing the opposite.  I wondered "Why?"  Which made me look into the Low Cost IVF Foundation which home page states:

The Low Cost IVF Foundation is promoting the provision of simplified clinical IVF services for a minimal cost that will allow couples, who could otherwise not afford it, access to IVF treatment for their infertility. 

It seems altruistic enough, but I dug a little deeper.  The first founder of the Low Cost IVF Foundation listed is Alan Trounson who is president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) which presides over a $3 billion dollar budget for embryonic stem cell and cloning research.  He was also the founding CEO of the Australian Stem Cell Centre which among other things provides human embryonic stem cell lines and training to researchers on how to destroy embryos for stem cells.

Why would animal embryologist Alan Trounson, whose resume touts scientific achievements like somatic cell nuclear transfer, better known as cloning, and the manipulation of human embryonic stem cells lines, want to make IVF more accessible?  It could be because he cares about infertile couples in third world countries.  I cannot help but wonder if it isn't good for business as well.

If there is a public option for health care, I wondered to myself whether it would cover in vitro fertilization better known as IVF.  It does in England and other European countries.  But would we pay for it here?  Logic dictates that there certainly would be a cry to cover it.  Roe vs. Wade not only established a constitutional right to abortion, but also the notion of reproductive rights. Roe v. Wade states that an individual, married or single, has the right “to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”

Some scholars believe means that we have a constitutional right not only to abort, but also to GET pregnant anyway we see fit.  The current lack of any federal regulation of the fertility industry certainly points to this sentiment.  John A. Robertson, law professor at the University of Texas, contends that, with the absolute right to abort a fetus, women also have an absolute right to any “non-coital technology” they need to bear children.  So if IVF is a "right" guaranteed by the Constitution then the government cannot impede the access to it.  Which means at some point, if the government gets into the business of providing health care coverage, we may be forced to cover IVF with tax payer money.

So what does this have to do with stem cell research?  Well, because of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment tax-payer funds cannot go directly to creating human embryos for research.  But if tax-payer monies went to IVF where excess embryos are created for efficiency, there would be more available left-over embryos to be destroyed for stem cell lines.  These government funded left-over IVF embryos could then be destroyed for embryonic stem cell lines that are eligible under current NIH guidelines for more taxpayer funds.  Government funds for the creation of embryos and for the stem cell lines they produce.

It would be simpler and more straight forward to just get rid of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which some government officials want to do, but paying for IVF would be a round about way to for the federal government to pay for the creation of human embryos and the subsequent embryonic stem cell research under the guise of helping infertile couples conceive.  That way government officials never have to abandon the line that they are only for funding of the stem cell lines from the "left-over" embryos and the American people would probably be none the wiser. 

I am sure certain pro-lifers who have no problem with IVF would even support the government paying for IVF without truly understanding the implications for the embryos that don't make it into a womb.

This may seem alarmist, but with government as complicated as it is nowadays, I can see this scenario coming to pass.  I would even go one further and can imagine that there maybe, in the future, a clause in government funded IVF that any excess embryos be available to researchers for experimentation "for the greater good" of those that paid for it.

Just in case you weren't convinced that IVF is human manufacturing.  From New Scientist:

AN ELECTRONIC ID tag that works even when cryogenically frozen could help prevent some of the mix-ups in IVF clinics that can cause heartbreak for would-be parents....

Part of the solution is a system called IVF Witness, which constantly monitors the identity of the gamete and embryo containers that are brought near to each other on the IVF lab bench - sounding an alarm if eggs about to be introduced to sperm, say, have come from the wrong woman.

The system, made by Research Instruments (RI) of Falmouth, UK, is installed in 16 of the nation's 90 IVF clinics. It uses 15-millimetre- square, sticky-backed plastic radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to label any dishes or vials that eggs, sperm or embryos are placed into. The tags house a memory chip and a coiled copper radio antenna. Each tag's memory is programmed with a unique ID code that is transmitted by its antenna when an ultra-low-power radio pulse interrogates the chip.

As a sample moves through the IVF process, the ID code of every container it is placed in is logged, providing a secure ID audit trail. So, in theory, only sperm and eggs from the right couples can be brought together, and the resulting embryos will be implanted into the right woman.

In the UK Times Online:

A MOTHER desperate to have a second child has told how she lost her last IVF embryo when the NHS implanted it into the wrong patient.

When the other woman found out that the embryo was not hers, she aborted it.

Details of the blunder raise fresh questions about the way IVF clinics are regulated.

And how would you prevent such heart-wrenching blunders?  Do what other manufacturing plants do: improve quality control.  In other words, tag 'em:

Electronic tags to track embryos, eggs and sperm samples should be mandatory for fertility clinics to reduce the risk of IVF mix-ups, according to a fertility expert.

Gedis Grudzinskas, a consultant in infertility and gynaecology, said that the technology existed to tag samples and should be made standard best practice.

Most likely they are talking barcodes and RFID tags.  You can't tell me that IVF doesn't take human procreation and turn it into human manufacturing.  And people think the Catholic Church is crazy for opposing manufacturing children in a dish.

Research shows that many times IVF fails because a majority of embryos created in vitro are chromosomally abnormal.

A majority of embryos are chromosomally abnormal?  Not a few, but the majority?  Parents who conceive naturally are vilified if they continue a pregnancy and give birth to a child with a chromosomal abnormality like Down Syndrome, but IVF doctors can create children with chromosomal abnormalities all day long and no one says a word? 

I know why.  Because these embryos are discarded or destroyed or die before anyone in society has to be made uncomfortable by their existence.

I understand the desire to have a genetically related child, but at what cost? 

For infertility treatments that work with your body, have a better success rate than IVF and are approved by the Catholic Church, visit NaProTechnology.

One woman came up to me after a talk and was hopping mad.  She said that IVF "was the ONLY way her son could have a child!"  She asked what business the Church had telling her that she cannot have grandchildren.  My response must have come straight from God, because I had no idea it was about to come out of my mouth.  I said, "How do you feel about having grandchildren on ice?"  At that moment she understood.  It is not about what we adults WANT.  It is about what is best for the offspring that result from the desire to have biologically related children.  I encouraged her to suggest adoption as an alternative to a future of hand-wringing over what her son and his wife would will do with their "left-over" offspring frozen indefinitely in a fertility clinic.

For many years, I thought I was a lone voice screaming about the unregulated infertility industry and the moral conundrums they have forced upon us.  But recently, after the birth of Nadya Suleman's octuplets, I am finding more and more people are waking up to realize that IVF is really human experimentation cloaked in a disguise of "reproductive rights."  Human experimentation on the woman who can give consent, and on the resulting children who cannot.

I found a blog titled Children Have Rights - Say No to Repro Tech, that frankly blew me away.  I found this entry called "IVF Children are a Living Experiment" in which blogger Veronica Thomas quotes a New York Times article that admits that doctors have no idea about the long term effects of being conceived in a dish.  She writes:

An article in the New York Times on Monday admits that children conceived with IVF are basically living human experiments. Scientists suspect that embryos that have developed in petri dishes are slightly different in some ways from embryos that develop in the womb, but they are still working out the specifics. They have some indications that IVF embryos are more likely to have certain genetic diseases and developmental problems. but they still need more data. The article says:

    "following babies born after IVF or intracytoplasmic sperm injection is not easy. And if problems emerge from epigenetic changes, they may not be apparent until adulthood or middle or old age."

In other words, if you're an IVF child, then you are a walking human experiment. Scientists are waiting to see what will happen to you as you get older, so that they can complete their data collections on the effects of IVF on people.

Sounds really ethical, doesn't it?

It doesn't sound ethical because it isn't.  It is too late to be asking whether or not IVF causes lasting changes that will effect the children much latter in life.  In fact, according to the Times article, it is clear that the focus was never on the health of the IVF children:

Richard G. Rawlins, who directs the in vitro fertilization and assisted reproduction laboratories at the Rush Centers for Advanced Reproductive Care in Chicago, said that when he spoke to patients he never heard questions about growing embryos in the laboratory and the possible consequences.

“I have never had a patient ask me anything” about it, he said, adding, “For that matter, not many doctors have ever asked, either.”

Why would they ask when the only concern was on what the parents wanted?  I find it astonishing that doctors never thought to ask if IVF may increase the risk of genetic disorders like Beckwith-Wiedemanns.  The side bar at the Children Have Rights blog is equally scathing:

Stop the Baby Trade

Yes, it is a baby trade, like the slave trade of old. Babies have become consumer products, accessories to our lifestyles. They are like pets, those cute and cuddly babies. And like pets, they can be made to your liking. Just buy the sperm at your nearest sperm bank, purchase an egg from your local egg dealer, and rent a surrogate womb. And in 9 months, bring home a baby without a pregnancy, without even a dent in your schedule!

There is supply and there is demand. Babies are disposable: their value and worth depend on being "wanted". As embryos they can receive a life or death sentence based on a screening of their genetic traits. They can be frozen indefinitely, donated for research or simply killed. In the womb they can be "selectively reduced". They belong to whomever they were "intended" for.

Apparently, adults have a "right" to a baby. And before they are born, babies have no rights at all. They can be bought and sold, or traded from person to person.

Wesley J. Smith echoes these sentiments:

Decades ago Leon Kass warned that IVF, originally created to help infertile married couples have children, would lead to an anything goes mentality. He was mocked, but he was right. We were told then, as we are being told now, that we didn't have to regulate the field because we should trust patients and doctors to make responsible choices.

The difference is that now we know we can't: Unregulated IVF led to overproduction, resulting in hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos. This led to our looking at nascent human beings as objects rather than subjects, natural resources ripe for exploitation in scientific and medical research.

Unregulated IV--ironically along with unlimited abortion--also contributed to the idea that there is an unlimited fundamental right to have a genetically related child--as perhaps millions of children can't find adoptive homes. This, in turn, led to ever more extreme methods to exercise that right--surrogate motherhood, paying eugenically correct young women to risk their lives and health to provide eggs for wealthy couples who want only the most intelligent and beautiful offspring, post menopausal motherhood, using poor women as if they were brood mares, discriminatory sex selection, the eugenic practice of testing and discarding embryos that don't fit our health or cosmetic desires, not to mention contributing to advocacy for human cloning, genetic engineering, and transhumanist utopianism.

Disposable, subjects, objects, exploitation, accessories, pets, trade, natural resources.  These are words that should never be used in conjunction with children, but thanks to IVF here we are.  The Church warned us decades ago: take sex out of procreation and it will reduce human beings to commodities.  I wished we would have listened.

When you give thousands to a clinic to make you a child in a dish and they screw it up, you abort.

Don't you love our consumer driven society?  Cars, barbecues, refrigerators, children, just take them back or throw them out if they are not what you ordered.

This is not the first study that confirms that children produced by IVF are more likely to have birth defects that those conceived the way God intended: in a womb, not a laboratory.  It probably will not be the last.  From Medical News Today:

A nationwide US study found that babies conceived with Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) were between 2 and 4 times more likely to be born with certain defects than babies conceived naturally.

The study was conducted by researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and was published early online in the journal Human Reproduction on 16 November.

Compared to babies conceived without ART, the CDC study found that among pregnancies that resulted in single births, ART was linked to twice the risk of certain heart defects, over twice the risk of cleft lip (with or without cleft palate) and more than four times the risk of some types of gastrointestinal defects.

So drinking coffee or alcohol, or smoking while pregnant is a cardinal sin in our society, but deliberately putting a child at greater risk for serious birth defects is fine.  Does not make any sense to me.

Is IVF human experimentation?  Before I began to read about embryonic stem cells and cloning, I would have said probably not.  Of course fertility treatments are thoroughly tested before they are used on couples desparate to have a baby, right?

I was uninformed and naive.  What I found in my reading was a direct link from the fertility industry to ESC and cloning research.  What was most disturbing was that I discovered that the IVF industry is largely unregulated because no one wants to put their foot down when it comes to giving a "loving couple" what they want in a child.  Too old?  No problem!  Genetic disease?  No problem!  Husband dead?  No problem!  Don't have a uterus?  No problem!  We can make a kid just for you!

Of course, some of you may think I am exaggerating.  Consider the following:

"The lack of regulation of fertility and genetic techniques means doctors can introduce experimental procedures into their clinical practice soon after they are invented often long before they have been adequately researched in animals.  -- Lori B. Andrews, reproductive rights lawyer

"A woman gets more regulatory oversight when she gets a tattoo than when she gets IVF."  --Brooks Keel, M.D., University of Kansas School of Medicine

"[Cloning] requires only equipment and facilites that are already standard or easy to obtain by biomedical laboratories and free-standing in vitro fertilization clinics across the country and across the world....  With a little practice on some spare eggs, skilled IVF practitioners could quickly master the published [cloning] techniques and improve upon them.  -- Lee M. Silver, professor of Molecular Biology, Princeton

Now, I would say yes, IVF is human experimentation.  Not just human experimentation on the woman who is pumped full of hormones, stick with needles and has the lab-created embryos implanted, but human experimentation on the children who have a biopsy performed within their first week of life in a dish looking for genetic disorders, or who are 4 times more likely to have Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, or who are born to parents who are old enough to be grandparents, or who, someday soon, may find out their genetic mother was an aborted fetus.

I am not alone in asking this question.  The Biopolitical Times has a great entry today on this very subject.  They are a progressive blog and probably do not agree with much of what I have to say, but I am glad that they have even asked the question "At What Point Does IVF Become Human Experimentation?"  Osagie K. Obasogie writes:

While many older women want to have children for all the right reasons, the fertility industry may be turning grandmothers into mothers for the wrong ones: to make money and simply see if it can be done. The ethics here are certainly questionable, but the larger impact fertility drugs and multiple-birth pregnancies have on women’s and children’s health suggest that we are approaching the fine line between treating infertility and experimenting on humans. And, in a growing number of cases, that line is behind us.

There has been alot of great analysis of the recent announcement that a couple in England has used the new technique of preimplantation genetic haplotyping (PGH) to have twins that did not have cystic fibrosis.

Preimplantation genetic haplotyping is a twist on preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).  In PGH a normally fertile couple, who wants to have a disease-free child, undergoes IVF.  The resulting embryos have a single cell removed and that cell is tested for mutations that cause disease.  PGH differs from PGD in that is uses DNA fingerprinting to determine which embryos are healthy.  DNA fingerprinting is kind of like a DNA barcode unique to each individual.  DNA fingerprinting is the technique used in forensic laboratories to identify possible suspects in a crime.  With DNA fingerprinting, PGH can screen for many more diseases than traditional PGD, around 6,000.  The "healthy" embryos are implanted and the "unhealthy" embryos are most likely discarded or donated to research.

The Catholic Church finds both PGH and PGD immoral.  Not only is it against the dignity of every human being to be produced in a petri dish, but to discard a new human life because of a genetic defect is, to put it mildly, a big no-no.

But PGH sure does tug at the heart strings.  The couple in question, the Greenstreeets used PGH to have twins free from CF after they had a daughter with the disease.  From the Daily Mail:

Today, Mrs Greenstreet, 38, defended her decision to reject the imperfect embryos, saying she and husband Jim, 41, did not want to repeat the experience of caring for a seriously ill child.

"Unless you have lived with a child that has a terrible disability or disease then you can't speak about it," she said.

"Who can criticise you for trying to get rid of horrible diseases? Why would you want to see people suffer? When you have got these lovely healthy babies in your arms it dampens all the pain we went through. They are designer babies but they are designed for the good of mankind."

Now that is a heart-wrenching statement.  Cystic fibrosis is a devastating disease and currently incurable.  But, I believe there is hope in things like gene therapy.  I whole-heartedly sympathize with this family, and I pray that God gives them all comfort and solace.  Those twins are a blessing, as all children are.  That does not mean that this was morally right.

Here is why.  Look into that little girl's face.  She is adorable.  She is also "genetically defective."  By discarding embryos with her same defect, her parents are saying that if they had known, she would have never been born.  How does her parents actions affect her?

And therein lies the rub.  I test for CF mutations everyday.  I test many pregnant women for CF carrier status. The idea is that if mom is a carrier and dad is a carrier, then an amniocentesis is performed to see if the fetus has CF. Of course, abortion is always an option.

I was surprised to learn that some in the CF advocacy community are against carrier screening and testing fetuses for CF. Why? Because it focuses on getting rid of the genes, not curing the disease.

And the reality is that even if PGH and eugenic abortion were widespread,  CF is not going away.  There are over 1000 documented mutations, and counting, that cause CF.  Most labs only test for around 70.  Which means there will still be children born with CF.  What happens to those children if most of those like them are not allowed to live?

With every eugenic abortion and PGH screen, not only does their funding and their hopes for finding a cure diminish, but the likelyhood of their having to justify their existence increases. Sound extreme? Maybe. But there was a recent case of a woman who was told by her insurance company, “Abort your baby that has CF or we won’t pay for any treatments.”

PGH is the very situtation for which the cliche "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" was coined.  Especially when you consider that there are some people walking around with two CF mutations, and therefore should have the disease, yet do not know it.  I know.  I have tested such a woman.

The focus needs to be on curing the disease, not making sure that no more children with CF mutations are born.  The later focus has devastating consequences for parents and children alike.  I can't say it better that Elizabeth R. Schiltz, an Associate Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, Minnesota:

From time to time, we are all confronted with the disconnect between how we see ourselves and how others see us. I've always seen myself as a responsible, law-abiding citizen. I recycle, I vote, I don't drive a Hummer. But I've come to realize that many in the scientific and medical community view me as grossly irresponsible. Indeed, in the words of Bob Edwards, the scientist who facilitated the birth of England's first test-tube baby, I am a "sinner." A recent book even branded me a "genetic outlaw." My transgression? I am one of the dwindling number of women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome and choose not to terminate our pregnancies.

So when I hear about medical breakthroughs like preimplantation genetic haplotyping (PGH)—a new technique to screen embryos in the in vitro fertilization process for 6,000 inherited diseases—I can't help but see 6,000 new reasons that parents will be branded as sinners or made to feel socially irresponsible for bringing their children into this world.

Just in case anyone was still under the impression the genetic screening of embryos (and the discarding of those that don't make the cut) was going to stop at only serious diseases, let me point out the very, very slippery slope of PGD.  From the Sunday Hearld:

People in the UK should be able to choose the gender of their children, according to fertility expert and Labour peer Professor Lord Robert Winston.

Winston pioneered pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), the process by which embryos can be identified as male or female . He had previously said PGD should only be used to discard embryos carrying a serious inherited disorder, but now believes otherwise.

“I think there are a lot of shibboleths to which we have paid lip service, but when you analyse them they certainly don’t threaten the moral fabric of our society,” he said in an interview with the Sunday Herald. “And one of them is sex selection. I think if sex selection was freely available in Britain it would change the balance of society hardly at all, if at all. There is really no evidence that it would. ”

Some great thoughts on IVF from Dr. Beverly at LifeEthics.org:

The immediate, urgent, problem - is that children are being harmed at very young ages.

Beyond the life issue: we don't know what we're doing, because the basic research in animals was not done first.

Instead, scientists and doctors rushed to be the first to publish, and justified much of what they have done by appealing to our compassion. It's hard for the most pro-life mother or father to protest actions that are sold as giving other mothers and fathers the children they so desperately crave.

The result: hundreds of thousands of the brothers and children of these children who are now in their parent's arms, are themselves in frozen limbo. They were created in harm's way, and are coveted by researchers who would disassemble them for their parts.

Occasionally in life you are faced with a miracle and you know you have been blessed.  Tonight was one of those moments for me.

I was giving a talk on the Catholic Chruch teaching on stem cells and cloning at a local parish and a man came in with an infant.  It was an hour and a half long talk and of course the baby started to fuss.  I was not bothered, but I thought he was going to have his hands full if he was going to be able to hear the rest of the information.

In my talks, I focus heavily on how abortion and IVF have gotten us into the stem cell and cloning moral conundrums we are currently facing.  That requires a lot of focus on the 400,000 so-called "left-over" IVF embryos frozen in limbo.

Afterward, the man came up to me holding his adorable, and I mean adorable, baby girl.  He introduced me to Abigail and then told me that she was one of those "left-over" IVF embryos and that he and his wife had adopted her.  I was overcome.

His story was amazing.  He and his wife had originally planned to do IVF.  As Catholics, they paused and began to look into the Church teaching on IVF and into the dark-side of IVF that no one likes to talk about: the "left-overs."  He said, "The Church held the answers."  They decided to adopt 5 embryos instead.  So far Abigail is the only one out of 3 that have been thawed that has survived.

She is precious and I can say a real miracle.  To think she was frozen in some tube only 19 months ago is staggering.

What I found interesting about their story is the fact that the attorney they had hired to look into adoption for them had to relearn his property rights law because in my state left-over embryos are considered property.  Disgusting.

Now before anyone gives me grief, I know that the Church has no official stance on embryo adoption, but in my opinion, this couple has done the moral thing and given 5 embryos the chance at a complete life.  I hope more infertile couples considering IVF stop, and think, and do what this couple has done.