A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has found that more than six in 10 adults support protecting access to in vitro fertilization (IVF), which has historically treated human embryos as commodities.
According to the poll, 62% of Americans (including both Democrats and Republicans) favor protecting IVF, the process in which human embryos are created in a lab and then implanted in a woman’s uterus or frozen. The poll also found that 52% of respondents said they do not agree that “human life begins at conception, so a fertilized egg is a person with the same rights as a pregnant woman.” Twenty-eight percent (28%) agree that life “begins at conception.”
Science proves that life begins at fertilization when a new, unique human life is created.
Despite the large percentage of respondents who favor IVF, there is disagreement over the way the embryos created during the process are treated.
Four in ten respondents (40%) said they had no opinion on the destruction of the embryos created, 25% said they favor banning the destruction of human embryos created through IVF, and 33% said they oppose such a ban.
“I’m about to go through IVF right now, and you’re trying to get as many embryos as you can so you can have more chances at having one live birth, or more than that, if you’re lucky,” said Alexa Voloscenko, 30. “I just don’t want people to be having more trouble to access IVF; it’s already hard enough.”
Here are four things, however, that poll respondents likely weren’t told:
1. IVF destroys human embryos at a higher rate than abortion.
While some pro-lifers support IVF, the reality is that the process of IVF destroys human embryos at a higher rate than abortion does, and dehumanizes these innocent human lives. As Voloscenko said, the process usually involves creating “as many embryos as you can.”
2. IVF classifies and rates the “quality” of human beings, and discards the ones that don’t make the cut.
These embryos are picked over to find the ones deemed to be of the “highest quality.” Embryos are also labeled by a grading system determined by how likely they are to survive, assigned designations such as 5AA or 4AB, which reduces them to items on a factory line rather than the unique and special individuals that they are. Those who don’t make the grade are thrown away. Classifying and killing human beings based on their perceived health is a form of eugenics.
3. There are often too many “leftover” usable embryos. Some are left frozen indefinitely and abandoned.
In addition, by creating more embryos than would ever be used, parents are creating children who will ultimately be destroyed or frozen indefinitely. These “leftover” children, once desperately wanted and celebrated, are sometimes donated to other couples or to science. Ultimately, at least 1.7 million humans have died during the IVF process and an estimated 1.5 million are currently frozen in the United States alone.
4. If several embryos are implanted, it can end in “selective reduction” by lethal injection.
Sometimes, too many embryos are implanted at once, creating a pregnancy of multiples that doctors then deem to be dangerous. This is when talk of “selective reduction” begins, and parents will be urged to abort one or more of the babies by lethal injection.
That was the story of Ashley and Calli, who wanted babies. But when five heartbeats were discovered, they ‘panicked.’ An early abortion procedure would kill all the babies, but they were offered that option with the plan of starting over. The other options were to carry all five babies for as long as possible, hoping they would all survive, or wait until the babies were larger and then inject three of them at 12 weeks with a feticide to stop their hearts. Then their bodies would decompose in the womb alongside the remaining two babies. That was the option they chose.
Though the IVF process involves creating life, it also involves discrimination and the sometimes intentional destruction of innocent human children as a means of fulfilling the wants and desires of adults.
What the 62% of Americans who support protecting IVF typically see is a smiling baby and happy parents. But the path to the birth of that baby likely involved a grueling process, with the conscious decisions to throw away and kill children — children who had been created on purpose to satisfy an adult’s dream of parenthood.
IVF leaves death in its wake more often than it allows life to flourish.
Editor’s Note 7/22/24: This article was updated to reflect the increased number of embryos currently frozen.
