Culture Of Life 101… “In-Vitro Fertilization: Unnatural Selection”

By BRIAN CLOWES

(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For an electronic copy of chapter 15 of The Facts of Life, “Artificial Reproductive Technologies,” e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)

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In the previous article, we discussed the adverse psychological effects that “pregnancy reduction” abortions often have on women who undergo assisted reproductive procedures and then find themselves — in their opinions — carrying too many babies. What often goes unmentioned is that surviving children who discover their prenatal histories are often psychologically disoriented and frequently suffer as well.
The Psychological Effects. Some studies have shown that a certain variety of “survivor syndrome” appears in some children who discover that their parents chose to abort their older or younger siblings. It takes the form of a cluster of existential symptoms, chief of which is a persistent feeling of unworthiness summed up by the expression “I feel as if I don’t deserve to be alive.” This is certainly understandable.
How can a mother explain to a child (of whatever age) that he or she is only alive only because she wanted and valued them at that time? How can a mother restore the feeling of self-worth in a child who suddenly realizes that she had assigned them no intrinsic value of their own — that they were a mere possession that could be kept or discarded, like a toaster or an old, frayed coat?
It seems reasonable that children who are lucky enough to avoid the “death needle” used in pregnancy reduction abortions may suffer from “survivor syndrome” if they eventually find out about their narrow escapes. How much stronger will this survivor syndrome be in children who escape death in the same pregnancy by mere millimeters — children who, just by chance, are still alive because they happened to be in the “wrong” random position when the killing(s) took place? What sorrow will they feel when they realize that their sibling(s) died in order to preserve their own life?
And what about the mothers? The vast majority of women who undergo embryo transfer or IVF have been infertile for an extended period of time and spend thousands of dollars for their assisted reproduction procedures. They obviously want a baby in the most compelling way.
So, after a mother experiences the intense joy of realizing that she is finally pregnant, she is then told that she has too many babies. She must observe a huge needle piercing her abdomen and injecting a deadly poison into one or more of her baby’s hearts.
What does this experience do to these poor mothers?
Unnatural Selection. In vitro fertilization may also contribute to increased abortions because it interferes with natural selection via two mechanisms. To begin with, the eggs that are “harvested” after stimulated ovulation may not be those that would have been released during the natural course of a woman’s cycle. Even more important, the sperm cells that just happen to be mixed with the egg(s) in a dish are certainly not the healthiest possible batch — those that would have had to survive their rigorous and hazardous journey through the female reproductive tract.
Many scientists believe that as many as 40 percent of all sperm are damaged or abnormal, and that almost all of these are screened out by the difficult trip through the uterus and Fallopian tubes.
This is one of the reasons that most IVF clinics insist upon prenatal diagnosis and abortion if the resulting baby is defective in any way. In fact, as we have seen, the parents of the first IVF baby, Baby Louise, were obliged to sign a contract that required abortion if prenatal testing revealed their preborn to be handicapped.
This type of contract is certainly logical. After all, defective “products” would be bad for IVF publicity — and business.
Creating Life in Order to Destroy It. It is bad enough to unintentionally produce an allegedly excessive number of embryos, some of whom are destroyed through “pregnancy reduction.” But what some multinational organizations have been funding for decades is even worse.
The International Population Union Conference on the Scientific Study of Population, held in London on 1969, was funded by the governments of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, West Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. This conference stated its purpose in its opening address:
“There are grounds for hoping that the use of IVF embryos for research will lead to the discovery of efficient new methods of population control. This is the real justification for the promotion and funding of IVF by governments and organizations involved in population planning.”
The research proposed and funded at this conference (and many similar ones held since) has investigated the possibility of finding a pill that would destroy the corpus luteum whether or not fertilization had taken place (the corpus luteum secretes progesterone, which maintains an embryo and prepares the uterine lining to accept it).
For the purpose of this research, a very large and continuous supply of human embryos is required, and most of these are supplied by government-funded IVF programs so that they can be destroyed in tests of abortifacient drugs. In other words, human life is being created for the express purpose of destroying it.
Not even women who obtain abortions intend this result!

Medicine Serving Desires

In vitro fertilization is one of a rapidly increasing number of examples of medicine serving people’s desires instead of their needs or illnesses. As a “service” fulfilling needs, IVF has inevitably become an outright business venture for many doctors with questionable ethics — just as abortion has become, and just as euthanasia just as inevitably will become, according to none other than Jack Kevorkian, “Doctor Death.”
Therefore, it was also unavoidable that unscrupulous operators should exploit women in exactly the same manner that abortionists do. Physicians and investigators have reported that many doctors prescribe fertility drugs without even taking a woman’s medical history, recommend painful and expensive tests, and generally “take” an infertile couple for all the money they can.
Assisted reproduction is a business, and a very profitable one at that. Add to this the fact that a number of prominent physicians in the field are also abortionists, and the science and practice of assisted reproduction has rightly come to be known as the “Wild West of Medicine,” cluttered with scandals and illegal activity of every kind — just like in the abortion business.
Abortionists and pro-abortionists corrupt and destroy everything they touch — especially if there is plenty of money to be made and their morals are questionable or nonexistent in the first place.
For example, during the 1990s, the Center for Reproductive Health at the University of California at Irvine was the subject of an exposé that revealed exactly the same kind of widespread lawbreaking and disregard for the lives of women and children that we find plaguing the abortion business.
The investigation uncovered:
Physicians pillaging some women for their eggs and embryos, implanting them into other women without authorization, and turning others over to zoologists for experimentation;
Staff stealing fertility drugs and selling them on the black market;
Staff losing many women’s records;
Whistle-blowers who were appalled at the conditions at the clinic being fired;
Many fraudulent and excessive insurance claims being filed; and
Two of three doctors running the business fleeing the country when the investigation began.
More recently, Georgia’s Xytex Corporation had an apparently perfect sperm donor (“Donor 9623”) advertised on its website. His résumé stated that he was a healthy man working on a doctorate in neuroscience, and was on his way to becoming a professor of biomedical robotics at a medical school.
But when some of the mothers of his 36 children investigated his claims, they found that he suffers from several serious mental disorders and also has a lengthy criminal record. Now the adoptive parents must wonder what lies ahead for their children regarding inheritable mental disorders. When questioned, Xytex officials lamely stated that the donors make up their own descriptions, which the company does not verify.
Does all of this sound familiar? It should! Pro-lifers have been hearing stories just like this about abortion mills for years. However, such abuse does not stop at the clinic doors; other women, particularly surrogate mothers, are also used and abused, as we will see in the next article.