Designed Babies
“The Sweetest Place on Earth” is the tagline for Hershey Park in Pennsylvania. In addition to a family-friendly amusement park, it is also the home of Chocolate World where you can create your own candy bar. For $29.95, you can “Dream up your perfect candy bar and watch it come to life, from flowing chocolate to solid bar. Choose your ingredients and design a personalized wrapper!” The price tag is steep, but at least you get to choose what ingredients you want. No surprises!
Customization is also one of the benefits of in vitro fertilization (IVF). While most couples do not choose IVF unless they are infertile, the “upside” is that embryos can be selected, indeed customized, for a variety of factors. This designer service is marketed to more couples including those who can conceive naturally. This is just one of the many ethical issues with IVF.
IVF was thrust into the political spotlight earlier this year when the Alabama Supreme Court found that embryos created via IVF were covered by the state’s wrongful death statute. The ruling caused a panic not only in the state, but across the nation, as IVF clinics threatened to shut down unless they were given complete immunity for negligent acts like the one at issue in the case, in which a hospital patient entered an unsecure area of the facility, removed several cryogenically frozen embryos, and dropped them onto the floor, thus killing the embryos.
The Alabama legislature quickly passed a law providing both criminal and civil immunity to IVF clinics and the governor Kay Ivey signed it saying, “Alabama works to foster a culture of life, and that certainly includes IVF.” In addition, former President Trump said Alabama, “really did a great and fast job” and gave unequivocal and unquestioned support for IVF when he released his statement on abortion and life issues.
Even Kellyanne Conway, a pro-life champion, seemed to get tripped up during an interview with Politico when reporter Ryan Lizza asked, in the context of IVF, how she would advise a Republican candidate who believes an embryo is a human life.
“I know a few people like that, I don’t know many and I know you always want them to be the rule and not the exception,” Conway responded. Lizza interrupted her and said, “You don’t know anyone who believes life starts at conception?”
She replied, “I know many who believe that. You are talking about embryos.” He interjected, “Embryos are the human life.”
Kellyanne ignored this statement and continued reiterating the facts of the Alabama situation and President Trump’s commitment to help families seeking IVF “in any way we can to create life . . .”
The regulation of IVF is sure to be an issue in this election year as pro-abortion advocates seek to weaponize “reproductive health” topics. Some on the right would rather ignore the serious ethical and legal issues surrounding IVF and instead seemingly champion its use without limitations. Is this the right approach?
Researcher Emma Waters of the Heritage Foundation published a report that raises many of these important questions. She reminds readers that “IVF treatments in the United States rely on the routine destruction of embryonic life, either intentionally or through neglect.” The report estimates that 4.1 million embryos were created by IVF in 2021 but only 2.3% result in the live birth of a baby. Waters points out that these excess creations are not essential to the industry. Louisiana and “many Western countries permit IVF but limit or prohibit the wanton transfer, production, and destruction of human embryos.”
Another troubling issue is the eugenics aspect of IVF. The Heritage paper states that, “more than 75 percent of fertility clinics offer preimplantation genetic testing for genetic issues; 73 percent offer testing for sex selection or hair, eye, and skin color.”
“Have Healthy Babies” is the promise on the website for Orchid Health, a company that offers whole genome screening of embryos. A customer testimonial says it “is the best thing you can do for your child and yourself.” Is it?
Dr. Raymond G. Bohlin, Vice President of Vision Outreach with Probe Ministries, asked in the April 2021 issue of the Eagle Forum Report, “If parents have constructed the best child for them using the best available technology they can afford, are they still parents, or creators and owners with additional rights and privileges?”
Stephanie Gray Connors has written about the tragic situation in China, where men vastly outnumber women by 33.59 million (in 2016) and are unable to find women to marry. This has led to men responding with “desperate measures and treating women as property, trafficking them as modern-day slaves, forcing them into relationships they do not want.” If IVF is used to allow parents to self-select the sex of their children, the U.S. could face a demographic problem.
Finally, eliminating any civil or criminal liability for the IVF industry leaves parents and their pre-implanted embryos vulnerable to negligence and abuse. Parents desperate for a child spend between $12,000- $30,000 per round of IVF. There are a number of instances of clinic negligence leading to destruction of embryos. In Ohio in 2018, 950 families lost 4,000 embryos when the freezer malfunctioned at the UH Cleveland Medical Center. Most clinics accused of negligence settle out of court, perhaps to avoid court rulings similar to the one in Alabama – that these embryos are indeed human beings.
According to a 2017 study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, “the average national payment over a 10-year period in medical malpractice cases involving embryos was $200,000.”
Shielding the clinics from liability does nothing to help families or babies. Law professor Dov Fox from the University of San Diego said in an article, “Damage awards are the principal tool that courts have available to remedy such wrongs. But as with many intangible losses, dollars and cents can’t of course make things all better or put the plaintiffs where they were before this happened.’’
Pro-life politicians should be careful not to uncritically support IVF clinics without protections and regulations. The ethical and legal issues are numerous and should not be ignored. As Dr. Bohlin stated, “Within a few short decades, our children will be pressured to alter their children genetically to keep up with society. Scientific research may well use human embryos as research subjects. This research may likely extend to developing fetuses, all in the name of furthering health and eliminating disease. Do we really think we can improve on the original design?”
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Kristen A. Ullman is the president of Eagle Forum. Kris served as Executive Director of Eagle Forum’s D.C. office from 1995-1998. She has served on the Eagle Forum Board of Directors since 2017.
