Why IVF and Surrogacy Are Not Pro-Life
Treating one’s body this way is wrong, even if the person consents to it.
The issues of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy can often cause divides within the pro-life movement. Since they are practices that create life, it can be easy to think that one must support their use in order to be authentically pro-life.
However, this view operates on a flawed and ultimately dangerous misconception of what it fundamentally means to be pro-life.
In this blog post, I would like to explain why the pro-life movement must unambiguously reject the practices of IVF and surrogacy and use this as an opportunity to dive deeper into the underlying philosophy that ultimately holds up the pro-life position.
First, what exactly are IVF and surrogacy? The “in vitro” of in vitro fertilization refers to how fertilization occurs outside of the living organism, such as in a petri dish or lab setting. IVF is performed by giving the woman superovulatory drugs to make her produce as many eggs as possible in a single cycle.
They then extract the eggs through a surgical procedure, collect sperm from the man, and then join the egg and sperm together. This is most often done by putting the egg and sperm together in a petri dish but is also sometimes done through intracytoplasmic sperm injection—essentially inserting a sperm into the egg directly.
This process is performed on several eggs at once, normally around ten to twenty. If fertilization occurs, the lab technicians monitor and grade the embryos based on “quality.” Sometimes they will perform genetic testing to screen for diseases or to select for certain traits. Finally, the chosen embryos will be implanted into the woman’s uterus, while “spares” will be frozen, used for research, or destroyed.
Surrogacy is when a woman agrees to carry and deliver a child for another person or couple. Traditional surrogacy occurs when the egg of the surrogate mother is used, while gestational surrogacy implants an embryo created through IVF in the surrogate mother. Both practices are often used by couples struggling with infertility or by homosexual couples who desire children.
Some pro-lifers, focused on the movement’s emphasis on the value of children and the beauty of motherhood and fatherhood, conclude that any way of creating children and allowing people to become mothers or fathers must, therefore, be good. But this misses the point of the pro-life movement.
To be pro-life is not to be simply in favor of the creation or existence of life. This places the focus solely on increasing the number of humans that exist at all costs. If we were simply pro-the-existence-of-life, then it would make sense to support absurd practices like the mass production of embryos for no other reason than to freeze them permanently.
This is obviously not what we mean when we say we are pro-life. Rather, to be pro-life is fundamentally about recognizing the intrinsic dignity of every human life. This dignity demands that we treat human lives in a certain way.
Thus, rather than being in favor of life itself, being pro-life is to be in favor of human lives being treated in a certain way. Properly speaking, we are pro-respect-for-life.
This is a significant distinction, the effects of which we can see in the examples of IVF and surrogacy. The critical question when evaluating whether IVF and surrogacy are “pro-life” is not whether they produce life but whether the practices respect the dignity of the human beings that are involved. IVF and surrogacy emphatically fail this test, both with respect to the unborn humans and the adult men and women that are involved.
Beginning with IVF, the practice treats both the woman and the child as mere means to an end. First, the child is treated as a product. Embryos are mass-produced to make the process more efficient and then graded as if they are objects whose value depends on their qualities and characteristics.
Several of the embryos—living human persons—are then discarded, frozen, or experimented on when they are deemed “low quality.” This process does not respect the inherent dignity of these embryonic human beings. Their value is intrinsic, not dependent on their qualities and the judgment of lab technicians. They deserve to be treated with respect and allowed to grow and flourish as human beings, not graded and discarded when found lacking.
Additionally, IVF treats the bodies of the men and women involved as mere means to the end of procreation. It does this by separating procreation from a genuine good, namely the marital union.
The woman’s body is injected with drugs to hijack her reproductive system and force it to produce more eggs than is natural. These drugs and the whole IVF procedure can also have dangerous side effects, such as ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, birth defects, multiple pregnancy, and even cancer. The man is then required to also use his body as a mere means of reproduction by producing sperm outside the context of the marital union.
Treating people’s bodies this way fails to respect their dignity. In this way, IVF can be analogized to illicit drug use. Abusing heroin treats one’s body as a mere means to pleasure by seeking the pleasure in isolation from a genuine good. IVF similarly acts as if people’s bodies are tools that can be manipulated to achieve an end (reproduction) in isolation from a genuine good (sexual union in marriage). Treating one’s body this way is wrong, even if the person consents to it.
Surrogacy faces many of the same ethical problems as IVF, in addition to several others. Just as in IVF, surrogacy treats everyone involved as a product rather than a person. Women are purchased from catalogs with their genetic profiles and personal information about their appearance, education, and mental health.
Embryos or eggs and sperm are similarly judged based on genetic testing or the characteristics of the parents and then bought and sold. Buying human beings and determining their worth based on their characteristics is a gross violation of the dignity of the human person. No person should ever be bought or treated as a product.
This commercialization of surrogacy also opens the practice up to the exploitation of donors and surrogates. With little to no regulation on the fertility industry, young women who are financially struggling can be pressured into selling their bodies to get by while not being informed of all the risks.
Surrogate mothers often end up developing strong attachments to the children that they carry for nine months, only to have them taken away from them. In some cases, such as multiple embryos implanting or a genetic defect, surrogate mothers are even forced to abort their children against their will if the paying individual or couple no longer wants the child.
Additionally, in many cases of surrogacy, the child is being cut off from at least half of his or her biological heritage. Children have a right to be raised and loved by their married biological parents. Surrogacy deliberately deprives children of that right. Unlike adoption, which seeks to make the best out of a non-ideal situation, surrogacy is a premeditated choice to create non-ideal circumstances for the child.
Donor-conceived children are more likely to have identity issues and be isolated from their families. Studies show they are twice as likely as those raised by their biological parents to have a problem with the law before age 25, over twice as likely to have substance abuse problems, and 1.5 times as likely to have depression or other mental health problems. They also fare worse than those who have been adopted on all these metrics.
The desire to have children is good, but in both IVF and surrogacy, the parents act as if they have a right to a child, engaging in a process that disrespects the dignity of the children, exposes them to additional risks, and deliberately places them in a non-ideal situation.
One can never have a right to another person. These processes fail to respect the dignity of everyone involved, especially the children being produced. For that reason, they must never be used, and in its mission to promote the respect of human dignity, the pro-life movement must advocate for their abolition.
For those struggling with infertility, this is an understandably difficult conclusion to accept. However, there are ethical alternatives to IVF and surrogacy that actually have a higher success. Natural Procreative Technology (NaPro Technology) seeks to understand the underlying causes of infertility and remedy them rather than hijack the reproductive system as in IVF.
These methods have a success rate of about 70% compared to IVF, which is only successful on the first attempt about one-third of the time. More importantly, these methods respect the dignity of the women and the children involved.
We in the pro-life movement should do what we can to support those who are struggling with infertility. They deserve our compassion and support, and the best way we can support these couples is to stand firm in our commitment to respect their dignity and the dignity of all unborn children.
In doing so, we should work to end the unethical practices of IVF and surrogacy, which are harmful to the dignity of the human person, and we should promote practices like NaPro Technology, which are safe, effective, and most importantly respectful of our inherent dignity as human beings.