In February of this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order promising to expand access to In Vitro Fertilization, otherwise known as IVF. On the outside, IVF seems like the perfect solution for couples struggling with infertility. According to CNY Fertility, they will retrieve an average of 5-20 eggs from the mother which they will then fertilize with the father’s sperm. The couple will then choose one or more of these embryos to implant and hopefully carry to term. As simple as it seems, there are still many moral and technical issues with the IVF process and industry.
First off, after creating more embryos than you have a use for, prospective parents need to decide what they are going to do with the rest. Most couples end up deciding to freeze them, discard them, donate them to scientific research, or most recently, wear them as jewelry. Please keep in mind that these embryos, while still in early stages of development, are living human beings with unique, unrepeatable DNA that has already decided what their gender is, what color eyes they will have and how tall they will be. From the moment they are fertilized, it isn’t just a blob of cells that is being frozen or discarded, they are real human beings, simply at an early stage of growth.
If the freezing and discarding of human beings doesn’t bother you, you still have to deal with the fact that IVF isn’t very effective in the first place. At its core, IVF just puts a Band-Aid over the problem and doesn’t work at solving most of the real causes of infertility. If Trump really wants to “make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children,” like he said in his executive order, he should provide more awareness about NaPro Technology. NaPro Technology stands for Natural Procreative Technology. NaPro focuses on getting to the root of the infertility, whether that is hormone levels, cysts, or some kind of blockage by offering surgeries or medications to cure these diseases and imbalances. This approach results in 53% live births out of 100 compared to 23% with IVF according to Modern Fertility Care. Not only is this approach more successful, but it’s more ethical as it doesn’t deal with the dozens of “extra” embryos that are created in IVF.
Don’t get me wrong, all people conceived in IVF are just as valuable and worthy of life as anyone else, but as a country we shouldn’t be promoting the creation of millions of people that are likely going to be frozen indefinitely, discarded, or experimented on. Trump needs to wake up and realize what he’s actually supporting before he goes around backing inhumane policies such as this one.
