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<\/source><\/picture>The\u00a0Dobbs<\/em>\u00a0decision striking down\u00a0Roe<\/em>\u00a0v. Wade<\/em>\u00a0has led to shrill outcries by providers of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy. Both are\u00a0lucrative<\/a>,\u00a0high-growth<\/a>\u00a0commercial industries enjoying increasing demand, thanks in part to rising infertility and late pregnancy among folk in income brackets able to pay for these services. Many of those involved in this industry are\u00a0alarmed<\/a>\u00a0that their \u201cmarket growth\u201d and profitability are threatened by abortion restrictions and are willing to\u00a0publicly say so<\/a>. Others have argued that state bans will likely\u00a0exclude abortion restrictions that will significantly impact these industries<\/a>.<\/p>\n The balance of the evidence suggests that at least some key aspects of IVF and surrogacy practices are threatened by abortion bans. In highlighting these threats, those who want to keep abortion spigots wide open to accommodate the \u201cneeds\u201d of IVF and surrogacy providers may reveal to more of our populace the true nature of much of what they do. The attention on\u00a0certain grim realities<\/a>\u00a0might undermine the significant\u00a0public support<\/a>\u00a0they currently enjoy.<\/p>\n For example, a\u00a0May 9, 2023<\/a>,\u00a0analysis in a blog sponsored by the Petrie Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School bluntly summarized common elements of IVF and surrogacy practices that are jeopardized by post-Dobbs<\/em>\u00a0abortion restrictions: \u201cembryo discard, embryo cryopreservation, preimplantation genetic testing (PGT), and selective reduction of multiple pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n We could also add the practice, common in surrogacy, of intended parents ordering the abortion of babies they have rejected as undesirable for reasons other than multiple pregnancy. Do the IVF and surrogacy industries really want public discussion of these realities? Let\u2019s dive deeper.<\/p>\n IVFs are multi-billion-dollar industries<\/strong><\/p>\n Purchasing and trading eggs and sperm, the creation of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of frozen embryos, supplying and managing surrogates, and more are now multi-billion-dollar industries. Much of this is even a form of eugenics, as couples increasingly screen out sperm, eggs, embryos, and even fetuses in order to select babies with preferred features. For example, everyone in the fertility industry knows that the monetary value of eggs and sperm used in IVF varies enormously by the supposedly desired traits of donors. As one former fertility clinic employee quoted in Katy Faust and Stacy Manning\u2019s excellent\u00a0Them Before Us<\/em><\/a>\u00a0honestly admitted, \u201cThe intended parents are buying genes, and they wanted white, movie star beautiful and diplomas from the right university.\u201d<\/p>\n As if there was any doubt about the eugenics hiding in the underbelly of the IVF industry, a July 18\u00a0Christian Post\u00a0news story<\/a>\u00a0reported on a new artificial intelligence (AI) software product for performing preimplantation genetic testing, touted on the\u00a0website<\/a> of its company, AIVF, as \u201cfully automated AI-based embryo evaluation.\u201d As David Prentice of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, quoted in The Christian Post, dryly remarked, this \u201cAI program is a tool used to pick and choose which embryos are higher quality; this means some human beings are looked at as lower quality, perhaps even discarded as lives not worth living.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, as that May 9 analysis admitted, they are terminating normal fetuses in women pregnant with more than one baby. The common term for this,\u00a0\u201cmultifetal pregnancy reduction\u201d (MFPR)<\/a>, is an Orwellian linguistic sleight of hand designed to disguise an awful reality \u2014 killing the babies one doesn\u2019t want when pregnant with more babies than one wants. Of course, multifetal pregnancies, and thus MFPR, often occur without the use of IVF. But IVF has increased the incidence of such pregnancies and MFPR due to women being implanted with more embryos than they would want to carry to term.<\/p>\n Multifetal pregnancy often results in forced abortions<\/strong><\/p>\n How often do women undergoing IVF have more than one embryo implanted? Quite often.\u00a0One fertility clinic<\/a>, relying on CDC data, gives these overall figures: \u201c\u2026half of the IVF procedures in the U.S. involved transferring two embryos, 23% involved three, and 10% involved four or five.\u201d So, we aren\u2019t surprised that, as of 2020,\u00a0one in five IVF pregnancies were \u201cmultifetal<\/a>\u201d and that dramatic increases in such pregnancies have been driven by this \u201cassisted reproductive technology<\/a>.\u201d Thankfully, the\u00a0use of multiple embryo transfers is declining<\/a>, but it is certainly still more common than most folk probably think.<\/p>\n Most surrogacy contracts specify the rights of intended parents to demand that their surrogates abort the babies they are carrying. A major reason for this is the risk of multifetal pregnancies. As one\u00a0clearinghouse site for surrogacy information<\/a>\u00a0bluntly states:<\/p>\n \u201cIn many surrogacy journeys, any decisions regarding pregnancy termination or selective reduction fall to the intended parents … For many intended parents, this means terminating unhealthy pregnancies or selectively reducing pregnancies in which more than one egg implants.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n These facts were bluntly stated in a Feb. 18, 2016 piece in\u00a0the\u00a0Atlantic<\/a>\u00a0entitled, \u201cWhen Parents and Surrogates Disagree on Abortion.\u201d After admitting that the \u201cvast majority\u201d of surrogacy contracts require the surrogates to abort babies if ordered by the intended parents to do so, the author lays out why this is viewed as necessary by most of these parents:<\/p>\n In surrogacy cases, the most common reason for abortion is multiple pregnancies. And of course, the likelihood of becoming pregnant with twins, triplets, and even four or five fetuses increases once IVF enters the picture \u2014 doctors will often implant multiple embryos at a time, to increase the chance that one will take. For various reasons \u2014 health, financial, or otherwise \u2014 parents whose surrogate ends up carrying multiple fetuses may request to \u201cselectively reduce,\u201d or abort one or more.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In some abortions forced on surrogates, abortion pills \u2014 which are\u00a0easy to obtain even where they are legally restricted<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 could be used. But MFPR doesn\u2019t work that way. The doctor has to kill one or some while keeping one or some. In fact, they need to let the fetuses develop for a while \u2014 typically\u00a011 weeks or more<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 before performing MFPR. This is later than the\u00a0recommended gestation period for abortion pills<\/a>. Thus, standard abortion restrictions could significantly impact the industry, abortion pills or not.<\/p>\n Most frozen embryos will never be born<\/strong><\/p>\n As that May 9 quote tacitly admits, IVF also leaves us with the nightmare of all those frozen embryos. Some facts from\u00a0Them Before Us<\/em>: about one million frozen embryos are in storage, less than 8% of these will ever be born alive, one-fifth or more are simply abandoned, and there are only three options for embryos that are not needed for future attempts at pregnancies: \u201cThaw and discard,\u201d \u201cdonate to research,\u201d or \u201cdonate to other parents.\u201d And how do we wrap our minds around the fact that parents with \u201cexcess\u201d frozen embryos are more than two times more likely to donate them to research than to give them to other families?<\/p>\n\n
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