The mess of IVF. . .

A gazillion years ago the Bionic Man appeared on TV.  Col. Steve Austin was created by technology better than he was created by God.  We have the technology.  We can do this.  And so it was that science began invading the area of reproduction.  It was no longer a matter of marital love or intimacy but technology.  In the beginning it seemed destined to offer real hope to those who have had trouble conceiving.  The costs were huge but eventually insurance paid the bills.  It seemed like a reasoned and solidly moral thing to do -- to help the childless reach their dream of a son or a daughter.  But along the way IVF and the rest of the tools in the reproductive technology toolbox began to leave questions unanswered and collateral damage along the way.  Part of this is the backdrop for the Alabama Supreme Court decision and this is the part that ought to make everyone of us -- Christian or non-Christian -- uncomfortable.  The rationale of we can does not answer the question of should we.

The IVF and reproductive technology industry is a mess.  While IVF affects a very small minority of live births each year (about 2 percent in the United States), it consumes a great deal of money and leaves us with difficult questions about the status of the fertilized eggs and frozen embryos that remain -- not to mention the number aborted in order to achieve a viable pregnancy. While those who oppose IVF may appear to be mean and unsympathetic folks, that is the opposite of the case.  The most unsympathetic view of such things believes the remains from IVF are banked for a future need or tossed out like yesterday's garbage.  Why would we spend so much and go through so much disappointment to conceive if none of this meant anything?  The question is not sympathy but a compassion big enough to encompass every side of this problem.

According to the CDC “IVF Success Estimator,” the odds of a successful live birth by IVF are affected by the mother’s age, weight, underlying fertility factors, and pregnancy history. So, for a 34-year-old female of average weight and height with no underlying pathologies, using her own (fresh, not frozen) egg, the success rate is high -- close to 50 percent.  The odds decline for someone older, or with a history of ovulatory or uterine disorders, or scar tissue.  These odds are the problem.  In order to achieve success, the lab must create of multiple embryos, choose the most robust, and stockpile 8 to 20 embryos for other attempts.  Those embryonic children not implanted are left to wait out their fate in a cryogenic limbo subject to lab integrity, care, and, of course, no acts of God.  Well over a million such embryos are stored in the United States.  We have no uniform plan or procedure for what happens to them and some will undoubtedly become scientific subjects for experimentation.  

Now the odds of a successful birth decline precipitously when using embryos previously frozen.  The American Society of Reproductive Medicine reports the pregnancy success rate is between 2 and 12 percent per frozen egg.  The mess we have created is a technology ahead of our moral values and labs and physicians acting on their own moral character.  How can any of us be comforted by the fact that so many frozen embryos are in labs across America with the most likely outcome of becoming medical waste or destroyed accidentally or by equipment failure?  Good grief, we have more rules about the cribs we place our infants in and the car seats they sit in and the toys they play with than we have about over 1Million frozen embryos!  Even if you are fully onboard IVF and supportive of all that reproductive technology is doing, do you believe that this is credible or that the programs in place are acting with sufficient integrity and oversight?  

The dust up over the Alabama case forgets that the suit was brought by proponents of IVF who had invested in the promise of the technology but who insisted the clinic keeping their embryonic children in cryopreservation had not provided adequate protection, thus allowing a patient to somehow wander in and remove several embryos, causing their deaths. The parents sued to hold the clinic accountable not for the wrongful care of their property but for the wrongful death of their children.  In its opinion, the Alabama Supreme Court held that a statute protecting minors (including, as precedent held, embryos in the womb) contained no exception for embryos outside the womb. Indeed, the whole point of this lawsuit was to claim that IVF is a mess, the care provided the embryos is lax and uneven, and the duty, morally and legally, was higher rather than less.  Oddly enough, the suit wanted IVF to continue but under more stringent supervision and held to a higher standard!

Christians often prefer not knowing over a fully formed awareness of how these things work.  It is high time that we marshal the same resources we have used so effectively in the cause of life to address the mess of IVF.  Just because we can does not mean we should.  Many things possible are not beneficial -- even in an emotionally charged debate over IVF and reproductive technology we must be prepared to say that some things are just plain wrong!