People who are anti abortion from conception, how do you feel about IVF?

Who is suggesting they are artificial?

IVF does not artificially create humans 🤣. No eggs or sperm are artificial in the first place so how do you suggest the embryos that are created are somehow artificial?

I'm sorry, the "you can't know something is right or wrong until you have struggled with the issue yourself and then you will undoubtable agree it is right" thing is really.... don't even know what to say.

It isn't true for one thing. But if it were, it would be a good argument that we should NOT let people who struggle with an issue have a say in whether it is an ethical practice.

Luckily we don't have to say that.

The point I am trying to make is that there has been talk about Frankenstein, artificially creating humans and similar.
Like some other posters I am highlighting that while assisted reproduction is assisted that is all it is.
It simply isn't possible to artificially create life.
It is no more possible in a Petrie dish than anywhere else, it is one of the things that makes ivf so stressful.
The basics of reproduction are the same in the female body or a Petrie dish.
There is no tech to create life all you can do is give the natural process the best chance of success during each step.

Exactly my thoughts on reading through this awful thread (should have stopped after page one - and don’t ask me why I didn’t - I get dragged in). I’ve never come across anyone with strong views against ivf who hasn’t had their own biological children.
I have 2 ivf children and I take zero offence at some of the awful comments and warped opinions on this thread. They can spout on as much as they want but it makes no difference to the fact that it exists (thank god - and like many other advances in medicine) and it is available and I have my beautiful “Frankenstein” daughters as a result. And I’m sorry but yes, I did have a right to be a mother. I’m not going to have some idiotic opinionated fertile woman tell me otherwise. Maybe they should be adopting as well as birthing their own children?

I’m not sure what point you are trying to make Dreich.

It’s biotech. It’s technological interventions in biota to achieve certain outcomes.

Disposal of frozen embryos has been identified as a category within the typology of areas for potential 'abuse within assisted reproductive technology', to be published in a forthcoming systematic review

Lots of really great points raised in this thread, so def food for thought & questions I hope I can raise in the working sessions for the workshop on Monday I mentioned earlier in the thread. Lots of bioethicists attending so v much looking forward to hearing what they reckon

I think im coming at it from the point of view that it is such a rare occurrence and is not the intention, so (IMO) it shouldn't govern the entire conversation. Is destroying potentially viable embryos the main issue to pro lifers? Could the answer instead be to provide more options to donate these or promote gentler methods to reduce the risk of this happening at all? I guess I'm not comfortable with the idea that the entire process should be stopped if it's based on the rare occurrence of viable embryos being discarded. Maybe that's because morally/ethically I'm on board and it's a question of managing that risk rather than an ethical question.

I would not characterise it as rare, really, it seems to me even from this conversation that it is not at all unusual for a couple to have a few left over embryos that they need to make a decision about. And unless you are talking about only creating ones you intend to implant for sure, that's potentially a problem.

I would agree that it's not some kind of huge numbers, but that's why it isn't paid as much attention by pro-life advocates. You don't tend to hear a lot of people talking about it unless it's in a discussion like this.
Now, could they do the process differently? I expect that's a possibility, and that would be fine for some people. For others, that's not the only element of IVF they have concerns about, so while they might be glad to see that change it isn't going to make them supportive of the process as a whole.

Life cannot be created through technology.
There is not the slightest guarantee that separating out the separate biological components will create life, there is no magic jolt of electricity to create life.
The human element cannot be ignored or replaced.

The lab based elements are all technological. That’s not being debated.

Ivf doesn't artificially create a human being. If it could do this the success rate would be 100% not 30% per cycle.
All ivf can do is create an opportunity for a pregnancy it cannot create the pregnancy and thus the human being.
Bringing the word Frankenstein into the debate is unnecessary. It is also inaccurate as the same biological process, with the same biological parts occurs in the lab as occurs during sex albeit with assistance in some cases.
My dc have only the dna of their parents. I assure they they are perfectly indistinguishable from their peers who didn't spend a few days as a tiny cell in a Petrie dish.

It’s more difficult to make a judgement from afar than to simply have no opinion whatsoever.

I'm opposed to the death penalty: if DH were to be murdered in a country that still had it, would I still be against it? I hope so, but I'm practical enough to know that when circumstances change so can opinions on what is moral and ethical. It's very easy to sit in judgement from afar.

Likewise, it is very easy to sit there and be ethically opposed to certain medical treatments when you have never actually needed them. I would be very interested to hear from someone who is ethically opposed and has actually refused treatment.

It seemed pretty clear Lass was referring to surrogacy involving technology; that was the context

Thank you. The relevance of the practices of the Babylonians towards slave women has little relevance- other than poor women nowadays are "volunteering" to be temporarily enslaved as surrogates using high tech as opposed to being raped by a slave owner.

obviously, I was trying to get you to explore your odd Luddite-esque stance on medical support of sub-fertile couples

Your analogy of world wide, mass infertility is still irrelevant and makes no sense.

It seems that Pro lifers and Catholics have a very high reguard for embryos

I am neither pro- life nor Catholic.

You would hope people are thinking about these issues a long time before being faced with them. But given the rate of technological change, it’s becoming more and more difficult to prepare young people for what might be available ten or twenty years from now.

Most people think quite hard before trying IVF, I appreciate abortion is slightly different as you might not have done your thinking before you find yourself not wanting to be pregnant.

It’s about preparing yourself for complex moral situations, not about being better or worse than those already in them.

It seems more complex than something is either human life or it isn’t. An embryo or foetus can have some value without being equivalent to an adult. And even if someone has full rights as a human, it doesn’t mean I necessarily have an obligation to keep them alive.

that’s generally why people attempt to develop their thinking about complex moral situations before getting into them. yes we can all have opinions from the sidelines but it’s rather blinkered to believe you will have an automatically better view from there surely?
I’m not sure why this is such a “complex moral situation”. If you believe that life starts at conception, then you must logically think that abortion or the disposed of embryos that can result from an ivf cycle are destruction of human life. Why this makes surviving ivf children Frankenstein or perhaps their parents were supposed to be likened to Dr Frankenstein, I’m not clear? You might I suppose feel they had taken life to produce life? Just as someone might consider a woman who has had an abortion has “taken a life” that could have been.

‘My point earlier was that it's all very well sitting in moral judgment of IVF, abortion, contraception, surrogacy, but it's a whole lot harder when those morals and ethics are actually tested.’

Yes, that’s generally why people attempt to develop their thinking about complex moral situations before getting into them.

It seems that Pro lifers and Catholics have a very high reguard for embryos. When those embryos eventually become people who have unplanned pregnancies or go through infertility though, not so much
This isn’t my experience.

It seems that Pro lifers and Catholics have a very high reguard for embryos. When those embryos eventually become people who have unplanned pregnancies or go through infertility though, not so much

Well more than 8 million ivf babies have been born in the last 40 years, personally I’ve yet to see a Frankenstein wandering around Tesco’s.

There is nothing "Frankenstein" about IVF babies. They are not different to naturally conceived children. There DNA is not altered, there is no test that will detect that for 3-5 days they were in a Petri dish rather than their mother's body. The fact that some people think they could be some sort of ticking time bomb shows a frightening lack of understanding of the process. Sperm meets egg, eggs is fertilised, egg (hopefully) implants in the womb. The fact that a few days of the process is done outside of the body doesn't alter the result in any way shape or form unless you cling to a strange belief that God is watching for anyone shagging with a bag of souls to hand that he then pops into any fertilised egg but that he can't detect eggs fertilised with out shagging to bestow a soul.upon.

When we first started TTC I was relatively young: the problem was not with me but with my husband. Would it have been better ethically (and less Frankenstein-like) for me to shag someone else to get pregnant and then brought the baby up as his? To me that seems very much a case of I want therefore I get, without thinking of the other two people involved: my husband and the child. Or should I just - as I am now - consider my future as a childless woman?

What I was trying to point out with the Babylonians - as I think uber was with biblical examples - was that surrogacy is not a new invention at all, as was claimed up thread. Yes, the method of it has changed but not that it exists. I've had a close friend offer to be a surrogate for me, and I've refused as I just don't agree with the practice at all. My point earlier was that it's all very well sitting in moral judgment of IVF, abortion, contraception, surrogacy, but it's a whole lot harder when those morals and ethics are actually tested.