(The following post was found on the Facebook page of Florida Right to Life and is being reposted here, without edits, with the permission of the author, Christopher Gladu. Photos added by Charles Stein.)
In the Republican response to the State Of the Union Address the other day, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama proudly proclaimed that the Republican party in her state just passed legislation protecting Invitro fertilization (IVF). In so doing she brought national attention to the issue but shockingly (to me) positioned it as a moral good for the pro-life party..
There is a tremendous amount of ignorance about IVF and we need to have those discussion now before future Republican groups codify evil into their platforms and laws. I’m guessing that 99% of people outside the Prolife activist community and maybe 60% of the people in it know nothing about IVF. The people who have used IVF have usually not thought it through from any perspective other than that of their own desperation for a child – a desperation I understand 100% since we could not have biological children.
My church has strong teachings against it but never communicates that to the people in the pews. Years ago, Lupe and I even had a pastor ask us if our Respect Life group would do a fund raiser for someone in the parish who had approached him asking for money for IVF. We had to refer him to the Catechism where the Church’s condemnation of the practice is explained. The priest had never read it and never spoke of it again.
But this is not a Catholic thing – the sanctity of life is a humanity thing.
There are a plethora of reasons that it is wrong, many of which involve a level of spiritual maturity and intellectual honesty that most self-centered American people may not be capable of processing, so I think we need to put first things first by focusing on the direct connection between IVF and abortion and getting this message out to Pro-life people. Just as with abortion, the approach needs to be loving and honest and pastorally sensitive to those who have had and lost children’s through IVF, remembering that no matter what anyone has done in their life, they can always turn back to Christ for forgiveness and healing – once they turn away from the sin.
Very simply: in a round of IVF treatments, 8-10 eggs are taken from the mother, combined in a petri dish with sperm from the father and 8-10 new lives are created. (These children, are equal in dignity to all naturally conceived children and are created in the image and likeness of God – NOBODY is responsible for how they were conceived except Jesus himself) .
The babies are then frozen for later use or placed inside the mother who is given medication to help strengthen the uterine wall so the babies have a better chance of implanting. There is a very high failure rate with implantation. Often, all of the babies die and a ‘new round’ of IVF is then ordered.
Some mothers are NEVER able to carry any of the babies to term, so babies are being intentionally created, in large batches, knowing full well that most of them will die. Parents have to want one or two children so bad that they are willing to artificially create, 8-10 or more knowing that most of them won’t make it.
It gets much worse.
When babies do successfully implant, then the parents are asked to use ‘selective reduction’ to get down to one or two who will then have the best chance of being carried to term.
This is direct surgical abortion.
The horror continues when there are ‘left over’ babies.
When a couple meets their family size goal or runs out of money to keep the un-implanted/un-wanted babies frozen, they are left with two options: (1) discard them (2) donate them. Most of those that are donated are donated to ‘research’ and used for laboratory experiments on fetal stem cells etc. There are tens of thousands of frozen babies in IVF mills today.
This is not pro-life. This is not a ‘miracle’ way to have children as some like to express.
These are just the most obvious problems with IVF and if we can get this information out to people who care we can make some kind of difference.
Suncoast Catholics 