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(Mercator) — Back in March, Mercator predicted that IVF would become a major issue in the 2024 American election. Guess what? We were right. Five months later, a headline in Politico reads: “Democrats test a battleground theory: IVF fears can win against a ‘pro-choice’ Republican.”
Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate, has already placed IVF front and center of his campaign rhetoric. He and his wife Gwen spent seven years with IVF before their daughter was born.
“This gets personal for me and my family,” Walz told a rally in Philadelphia. “When my wife and I decided to have children we spent years going through [so-called] infertility treatments.”
(Late flash: “Thank God for IVF,” Walz told another interviewer. “My wife and I have two beautiful children.” Except it wasn’t embryo-destroying IVF at all, it turns out, but another kind of fertility procedure. “Governor Walz talks how normal people talk,” his press secretary explained.)
In fact, the Democrats are using IVF as a wedge to detach anti-abortion Republicans from the Trump-Vance ticket. IVF, the argument goes, is “pro-life” because children are created for infertile couples. Opposing IVF is cruel and anti-life. It’s a powerful argument which has traction with voters.
According to a Pew Research Center survey published in May, 70 percent of American adults believe that IVF access is positive; 22 percent are unsure, and only 8 percent say it is negative. The survey found that even large majorities of white evangelicals (63 percent), black Protestants (69 percent) and Catholics (65 percent) view IVF as a good thing.
However, not many people have thought through the moral complexities of IVF. What can be wrong with a technology which allows a loving couple to have a baby, they ask.
But there are substantial moral issues.
The largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), recently defied the opinion polls and passed a resolution that made headlines across the U.S. A majority of its 10,000 delegates declared that “though all children are to be fully respected and protected, not all technological means of assisting human reproduction are equally God-honoring or morally justified.” The SBC’s opposition is based principally on the fact that the IVF industry has created millions of frozen human embryos – and most of them will be destroyed.
Dr R. Albert Mohler Jr., the “reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement in the U.S.” according to Time magazine, ruefully acknowledged that “[f]ar too many Christians say they believe in the sanctity and dignity of human life at every stage, from fertilization to natural death, but when the issue turns to the massive ethical issues related to IVF, many evangelicals, including far too many Southern Baptists, have refused to connect the dots.”
READ: Pro-lifers warn IVF kills more babies than abortion, slam Ted Cruz for supporting it
The Catholic Church connected the dots long ago. It has always opposed IVF and has developed a sophisticated critique based on its understanding of human sexuality. Its official Catechism states that IVF is “morally unacceptable” because it separates the marriage act from procreation and establishes “the domination of technology” over human life. It, too, is horrified at the fact that embryos are treated as raw material rather than human beings.
More surprising than the position of leading Christian churches, however, is the vehement opposition to the IVF industry displayed by some feminists, including the running mate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Nicole Shanahan. She doesn’t mince her words. “I believe IVF is sold irresponsibly, and my own experience with natural childbirth has led me to understand that the fertility industry is deeply flawed,” she said in an essay in People magazine.
Shanahan is not a Christian, or not a practicing Christian at any rate. Millions of embryos on ice don’t appear to worry her. But she is a feisty feminist and she feels that the U.S. $5 billion IVF industry is exploiting women.
“I’ve spent the past five years funding science to understand the environmental factors that impact women’s reproductive health because these have gone largely ignored,” Shanahan told Politico. “IVF is a very expensive for-profit business, and many of these clinics are owned by private equity firms that are not invested in the underlying health of women.”
So here’s a message for both Republicans and Democrats: there’s no shame in opposing IVF. Fundamentally, it’s not a religious issue but a human rights issue. IVF exploits women and frozen embryonic humans. If they had any sense, progressives would be campaigning against it, rather than for it. Here are some of the main reasons why.
There are millions of frozen embryos in the U.S. and most will be destroyed. The SBC estimates that as many as 1 to 1.5 million embryos are currently stored in American IVF centers. No matter what you feel about the personhood of embryos, this should make you queasy. In fact, one of the reasons for the accumulation of embryos is that their parents can’t bring themselves to have them destroyed – they feel queasy about making such a momentous decision.
Sex selection is an integral part of the IVF industry. “Choosing the Sex of Your Baby is as Simple as P-G-T! [pre-implantation genetic testing],” says one California facility on its website. In many cases, this is a way of discriminating against girls. “Everyone, regardless of gender, is protected from sex discrimination under Title VII,” says the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Everyone, that is, except female embryos.
DIY eugenics. As a way of value-adding to the IVF experience, facilites offer to screen embryos for genetic diseases. Some are offering even more services. “Select the Gender and Eye Color of Your Next Baby. Lowest base price, highest success rates of any U.S. PGD gender selection program” is the marketing tagline for another California facility. The world repudiated eugenics after the moral catastrophe of Nazism. IVF centers are reviving eugenics as part of their crass and manipulative business model.
IVF is painful – as Tim Walz can attest. As women age, the probability of success diminishes rapidly and often their desperation rises. “IVF can be an emotional rollercoaster bringing on feelings of anxiety, stress, and depression for both parties,” one facility admits.
IVF exploits women. Last month, one of the world’s leading medical journals, The Lancet, which is also pro-choice, ran a searing editorial which concluded: “A profit-driven fertility industry cannot continue to prey on the vulnerabilities of people who desperately hope to have children.” The Lancet accused IVF facilities of increasing the psychological pain of infertility without increasing access to quality care. “The evolution of the fertility industry carries the risk of shifting the focus from evidence-based and patient-centred practice to shareholder revenue and business growth,” it says.
IVF commodifies women’s bodies. The IVF industry also creates a market for eggs. Egg retrieval can be dangerous and is occasionally fatal. Women are treated like prize cattle, with website profiles listing their eye color, hair color, ethnicity, height, and weight. High IQ blondes seem to command the best price for their eggs.
IVF enables other controversial procedures. IVF is an essential part of surrogacy, which notoriously exploits poor women, often in developing countries. It makes it possible for gay men to have babies. It allows scientists to experiment on human beings. It allows drug companies to test their drugs on human beings. A vote for IVF is necessarily a vote for ethical shambles.
There may be an argument for national regulation of an industry which is regularly described as a “Wild West” in fertility medicine. There can be none for placing it on a pedestal and treating it as an untouchable national treasure.
Reprinted with permission from Mercator.
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