benlehman

After the most recent terrorist attack, I wanted to make a post about abortion, but I really don't feel fit to: I mean, I'm a dude, and also not a doctor.

There is one thing in all this argument that never seems to come up, though, and I wonder why. That's in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF is a fertility technique where a large number of harvested eggs are fertilized under laboratory conditions and then implanted into a woman's uterus. It is used both to help low-fertility couples reproduce and also in surrogate pregnancies, a more complicated procedure involving an egg donor and a surrogate mother, that helps totally infertile heterosexual couples or male homosexual couples have children.

In the process of IVG, countless blastocysts (early-stage fertilized cells) are discarded. Furthermore, because IVF treatments often end up impregnating a women with many multiple embryos, there are often selective abortions to reduce the number of fetuses and increase the health of the remaining fetuses and the woman (euphemistically called "selective reductions.")

Why does this never come up? I mean, if you take as a given that human life starts from the moment of conception, a bog-standard IVF clinic kills *way* more human lives than poor Dr. Tiller ever did, and for much more frivolous purposes (a late-term abortion to save a three-month life of pain and misery at least could be morally justified. But the blastocysts discarded in IVF often could be viable, they're just discarded because they're superfluous, and IVF clinics are run as an industry, at high profits.) Why do people not protest in front of IVF clinics, and direct their terrorist tactics towards the for-profit IVF industry?

Likewise, pro-choice people? When arguing with a vehement blastocyst's rights person, why don't you ask about this? If it really is about the sanctity of all life after conception, and not punishing and controlling women, then they should have an answer for that, right? Why drop the tool out of your argument?