Actress Elizabeth Banks underwent 9 rounds of IVF to get two sons, born by surrogate

Actress Elizabeth Banks, who has previously shared that she turned to IVF and surrogacy to have her two sons, now teenagers, revealed this week that she went through nine rounds of IVF before her sons were born.

Key Takeaways:

• Actress Elizabeth Banks used IVF and a surrogate to have her two sons, ages 13 and 15.

• She recently revealed that she underwent nine rounds of IVF to make this happen.

• Those nine rounds of IVF could have resulted in the creation of more than 80 embryos.

• Banks' story highlights the significant number of lives lost in the quest to create life artificially.

The Details:

In a recent episode of the podcast, Modern Love, Banks, 52, offered more details about her efforts to have her sons, Magnus, 13 and Felix, 15, with her husband Max Handelman. She had previously shared that she underwent IVF and used a surrogate, but now, she is sharing how many attempts it took to have her sons.

One of the first questions her fertility doctor asked was if she had ever been pregnant before. And while she initially thought it was a "weird question," Banks soon realized why he had asked it.

She had been having sex for 20 years and had never had so much as a pregnancy "scare."

"And so, it was my first wake-up call of like, yeah, maybe something's not totally right here," she said.

Because of this, Banks said the fertility doctor explained, "'I think surrogacy is gonna be for you,' ... we can go through IVF and do all the things. And we did. I did. We undertook nine procedures to have our two sons."

Why It Matters:

Banks' quest to have children is understandable, and Magnus and Felix are valued, worthy, and cherished human beings. But their lost siblings were as well.

On average, each round of IVF involves the creation of nine embryos — and research indicates that most women will go through two to three cycles before achieving a successful pregnancy, so Banks' experience of undergoing nine cycles to get two babies is higher than average.

If Banks had made just one embryo with each round, that would mean at least seven babies died, were donated, or remain frozen. If she made the average of nine, that count could be as high as 79 babies.

Key Facts

• Half of all embryos created in an IVF cycle do not survive to the blastocyst stage of life, and half of those do not pass genetic testing and are often automatically discarded.

• Only about seven percent of embryos will survive to be born.

• The embryos "left over" after the desired number of children are born are likely to remain frozen indefinitely or are donated to research or destroyed.

• IVF comes with risks for women and born children, both physical and emotional

• Surrogacy involves the intentional separation of the child from his or her birth mother, which can cause trauma that permanently alters the baby's brain, and can cause emotional, behavioral, and neuroendocrine stress responses in adulthood.

But on the quest to have the "wanted" baby, doctors and would-be parents often ignore all of those risks as well as the dead embryos (who are human beings) left in the wake.

The Bottom Line:

The desire to have children and build a family is good, but the unregulated mass production of children is dangerous for children, for women, and for a society has begun to view children as products that adults have a right to rather than the gifts that each one is.

When the creation of human life becomes a business and the demand for the 'perfect' product grows, it can only lead to the further devaluation and destruction of human life.