In vitro fertilization (IVF) has become the go-to option for couples facing infertility, with adoption rates plummeting in recent decades. Is it merely an issue of wanting a genetic connection to a child, or are there deeper issues at play?

Key Takeaways:

• Couples struggling with infertility are signifcantly more likely to pursue IVF over adoption.

• IVF rates have increased as its success rates have increased, and many would-be parents desire a genetic connection to their child.

• However, other factors, such as monetary and even possible emotional costs involved in adoption, could also dissuade couples pursuing parenthood.

The Details:

Couples facing infertility often face several options: pursue assisted reproductive technologies (ART) like IVF, pursue adoption, or choose to remain child-free.

As medicine has advanced overall, so has ART, bringing about higher success rates for IVF (if attempts continue for nearly a decade). However, the rates are still not terribly optimistic, and numerous lives are destroyed in the IVF process. As a previous report from Live Action News indicated:

IVF has low ‘success’ rates and destroys human lives at a high rate. It successfully creates human lives outside of the womb, but for women under age 35, the live birth rate sits at about 50-60% — a percentage that declines as the woman ages, down to as low as three percent (3%) for women over age 42, according to ARC Fertility. Yet, according to the Center for Human Reproduction, over 75% of its IVF patients are over the age of 40, with nearly 60% over the age of 42 and 50% over the age of 44.

IVF is carried out 2.5 million times annually around the world — but each year, only 500,000 babies are born as a result of the procedure, according to research published in Reproductive Biomedicine Online. That means if just one embryo is created during each IVF cycle (the average is seven), at least 80% (or at least two million) of the human beings created through IVF each year either die during the process, are frozen indefinitely, or are destroyed after failing to make the cut.

Subsidizing IVF also increases the number of IVF attempts. IVF is often covered by insurance; help with adoption costs may be included as a separate employee benefit, but less often.

Competing with IVF

Media reports also further confirm that couples are more likely to look to IVF over adoption.

The BBC, for example, reported that adoptions have fallen 62% in the last 40 years. One woman interviewed by the outlet, Heather Bell, admitted she thought about adoption all the time, but she and her husband chose to pursue IVF instead. She said she didn't think she had the "emotional energy" to pursue adoption, and eventually had two biological children through IVF.

Carol Homden, chief executive for Coram, Britain's largest adoption agency, told the Telegraph:

"I wish we could somehow find a way of communicating more clearly that adoption is an alternative to what can be an extremely emotional journey in IVF. Obviously it’s marvellous, the scientific advance, [and] that so many people are succeeding in having their family through IVF. But for some people, they embark upon multiple rounds and that is in itself a different form of loss and emotional trauma.

It sometimes feels [as if] the option of actually using that emotion in a different way, to give a home to a child that desperately needs one, comes quite late."

Anthony Douglas, head of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), further pointed out that adoption now has to compete with IVF.

"As a choice, adoption is competing with lots of other ways of having children," he said, adding that the wait for a successful adoption makes the issue worse.

“Every child deserves a family to live and grow up in but adoption still takes twice as long as it should, which puts people off. Most children will come with some damaging experience that needs therapeutic support and they may have difficulties through their childhood. To assess and train for that… does take some months, but it’s still taking too long.”

Yet there are still other issues that may be leading couples to consider IVF over adoption.

Zoom Out:

Bioethicist Katherine Breckenridge, author of "Silent Sorrows: Let's talk about abortion, reproductive technologies, and adoption," spoke to Live Action News about adoption and IVF:

"When I worked for Them Before Us, I was intrigued by all of the comments that adoptees were making on our social media posts comparing surrogacy and adoption, and the similarities were obvious even though adoption is sometimes necessary and surrogacy is, literally, never necessary.

I started researching the harms that can come from separating children from their mothers, such as how the vulnerable, developing brains of infants are impacted from maternal separation...."

She emphasized that adoption warrants certain considerations:

"We first need to do all that we can to provide pregnant mothers with resources and true informed consent that allows them to make decisions free from coercion and outside pressure....

However, there are absolutely circumstances where children need to be adopted, and it is possible to undergo adoption ethically through a trauma-informed approach that is free of coercion and commodification." 

Breckenridge noted that the adoption process can be difficult for first mothers (birth mothers), as well as would-be parents seeking to adopt. She explained:

"Agencies can get adoptive parents' hopes up by conveying adoption as a predictable endeavor that does not often result in women changing their minds and deciding to parent, and promise them that if they pay for a first mother’s expenses, then they will 'get' a child. This is incredibly commodifying."

Breckenridge added that great care must be taken to avoid coercion in the adoption process:

"Even on the day of birth, mothers need time with their babies to make decisions free from pressure, so agencies should never be promising infants.

Even if prospective adoptive parents feel that the agency doesn’t have the best interests of the first mothers in mind, they may still feel pressure to continue with an agency after investing so much money despite ethical reservations, and may view a mother deciding to keep her child as a personal slight, or a 'failed adoption,' instead of a successful family preservation."

Breckenridge also elaborated about the way that adoption is portrayed, saying it can mislead people and create certain "mindsets" that can be damaging:

"Advertisements towards prospective adoptive parents that say things like, 'Create your family through adoption!' also entice prospective adoptive parents with the idea that this is their solution to their infertility struggles, and therefore their expectations are raised that adoption is their solution as opposed to adoption being a child-centered approach for children who can no longer be with their families.

This messaging can also enforce a mindset of entitlement by telling prospective adoptive parents that they deserve families, and reinforcing the idea in society that if you undergo the adoption process, you are automatically owed a child.

Since the adoption industry is a supply and demand business, prospective adoptive parents may also be urged to create profiles that make them stand out against other prospective couples, and/or feel pressured to 'sell' themselves to a pregnant mother... and there is no help offered to the pregnant mother by the agency to help her keep her child."

By The Numbers:

In addition to the ethical issues surrounding adoption, there is the simple matter of money pushing would-be parents towards IVF.

"While the adoption industry can indeed be unethical, IVF is always inherently unethical because the process plays trial and error with the lives of thousands of embryonic human persons annually," Breckenridge said.

She added, "IVF may also appear to be the cheaper option over adoption, but this isn't necessarily the case. Each IVF cycle can cost approximately $15,000 and $25,000, and even the 'best prognosis' patients, those under 35 years of age, have an average of two egg retrieval cycles, and those over 40 can undergo up to nine."

She explained:

"While the adoption industry can be reformed to where agencies are not making any money off of the exchange of parental rights, IVF can never be done ethically and we need to stop giving the industry ammunition.

Even though adoption agencies can be coercive and commodify children to fulfill their own desires, adoption at its core — the act of taking over parental rights for another — is not intrinsically evil. However, IVF is corrupt no matter how it’s done.

When done correctly, there is nothing morally illicit about taking over parental rights for another as a last resort when the child absolutely can’t be with family. We can’t control every decision people make that lead them to not being able to keep their children (though we can do our best to help them), but we can control not feeding an industry that experiments with human life." 

As Live Action News reported in a previous article from this adoption series, private adoption can cost as much as $80,000; while agencies are typically not making excessive profit, the bulk of the fees go towards program expenses, like "compensation, benefits, rent, and travel for employees who provide direct adoption services, as well as pass-through costs paid by agencies to other providers."

Additionally, adoption agencies often require prospective parents to pay for the birth mother's expenses, which is itself an issue.

"Prospective adoptive parents should only have to pay for necessary expenses like home checks, background checks, etc.," Breckenridge opined. "... When prospective adoptive parents pay for pregnancy expenses, this puts too much pressure on the pregnant mother to make an adoption decision with which she may not actually be comfortable, and can also provide false hope to prospective adoptive parents."

Why It Matters:

One of the biggest issues with the promotion of IVF over adoption is that it is inherently unethical, dehumanizing, and commodifying.

"The IVF process experiments with human life at its earliest stage by creating human beings in laboratories, grading and discarding human lives deemed unfit, donating 'leftover' embryos to research or perpetually freezing them, and subjecting these human lives to the trial and error of the embryo transfer process," Breckenridge said. "The IVF industry is built on the deaths of millions of lives — this is not a pro-life practice, and no one who seeks to honor the dignity of human life from the moment of fertilization should condone this procedure for any reason. It is not child-centric to sacrifice human embryonic lives for the purpose of obtaining one living child."

Destruction is rampant in IVF; an estimated 1.7 million embryos have been destroyed through the IVF process, and in the United States alone, there are an estimated one million embryos which have been frozen indefinitely.

Comparatively, about one million babies have been born through IVF in the United States. Aside from the destruction ever-present in IVF is the eugenics-based nature of the practice.

The Bottom Line:

Adoption can be a life-saving solution for mothers unable or unwilling to parent, and the more ethical answer to couples considering IVF. While adoption can be done in an ethical manner, IVF never can be.

Breckenridge noted that "While adoption industry reform is needed, when first doing all that is within one’s power to make sure that mothers are not unnecessarily separated from their children, and vice versa, adoption can be done in the most ethical manner that honors not only the best interests of the children, but every member of the adoption triad."

Go Deeper:

Read other articles in this Live Action News adoption series below.

• How open adoption is transforming a once-troubled industry

• Adoption costs vary widely. Where does the money go?