Republican Vice President nominee JD Vance is the latest politician to speak out in support of in vitro fertilization. Vance, the son of an absent father and an abusive mother, was raised by his grandparents. Today, he ironically champions a practice that separates children from their mothers and fathers and violates, as well, their inherent right to life.
In response to his “childless cat lady” remarks regarding Democratic politicians, Vance stated, “It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. … This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”
While Vance voted against the Democratic “Right to IVF Act,” he supported the Republican “IVF Protection Act,” requiring states either to continue providing IVF services or lose their Medicaid funding. Vance stated that he wants to “… make it easier for moms and dads to choose life if, of course, they’re in a terrible situation where they have fertility problems. I believe babies are a profound moral good.” However, Vance, like several other self-proclaimed “pro-life” politicians, have not done their research into how IVF takes more life than it creates. While babies are indeed a “profound moral good,” experimenting and discarding their embryonic lives is profoundly and intrinsically immoral. As stated in Evangelium Vitae, “various techniques of artificial reproduction, which would seem to be at the service of life and which are frequently used with this intention, actually open the door to new threats against life” (No. 14).
“Safe, effective and reliable”
The “IVF Protection Act” states that: “Since its development in the 1970s, in vitro fertilization … has proven itself to be a safe, effective and reliable means to achieving pregnancy.” In reality, the IVF process is not safe, effective or reliable, as not only are these embryonic human lives subject to the hazards of experimental trial and error, but IVF treats human beings as commodities, which one has the right to manufacture at the expense of the created persons who never survive the IVF process. These persons’ lives, while being optimistically viewed as made-to-order, actually constitute through the IVF process a sacrifice of millions of human beings to death in the false belief that IVF is about nothing but “creating new life” for adults who believe they have a right to it at any cost.
As for “effective and reliable,” the average live birth rate among women aged 35-37 (using their own eggs) is 42.8%. Women aged 38-40 using IVF have a live birth rate of 35.5%. Further, after the first IVF cycle, less than 30% of women have a live birth, and there’s a paltry 45% success rate after three full cycles of IVF. Two-thirds of patients will be successful after six or more cycles.
Having about 10 to 12 mature eggs after egg retrieval is recommended for successfully having one child, and, on average, depending on the woman’s age, about 80% of eggs will fertilize. So, if there are 10 eggs, then about 8 of them will fertilize. How many embryos are created and don’t survive, considering that over 8 million children have been born through IVF since 1978 and only 2-7% of lab-created children are born alive?
The bill further states, “IVF is a pro-woman and pro-family solution for those struggling to have children.” While IVF is seemingly “pro-woman and pro-family,” it is certainly not pro-life. Many embryos created through IVF will be discarded through eugenic preimplantation screenings (where many viable embryos are actually deemed “unviable”), discarded for being “leftover,” indefinitely frozen and potentially transferred at a later date (if they survive the thawing process), donated to scientific research and eventually destroyed, or be aborted if “too many” embryos implant in the uterus at once. In 2021, it was reported that out of 413,776 IVF cycles, there were only 112,088 pregnancies, and 91,906 live births (deliveries of one or more living infants).
Gamete donation
Vice Presidential candidate Vance, a Catholic, raised apart from his biological parents, should certainly not promote a practice, which often separates children from their mothers and fathers, as the IVF process often involves the use of sperm and egg donors. Conceiving children through gamete donation profoundly affects the rights of these children by denying them the right to their mothers and fathers and causing them to struggle with a vague or nonexistent genetic identity. Over 80% of donor-conceived children desire to know the identity of their biological fathers and/or mothers, and donor children disproportionately struggle with questions about their identity, depression, delinquency and substance abuse.
In a study of young adults conceived through sperm donation, it was found that more than half of donor-conceived adults say, “I sometimes wonder if my sperm donor’s family would want to know me.” Sixty-five percent of donor offspring agree, “My sperm donor is half of who I am.” Nearly half are bothered that money was exchanged during their conceptions, and as they grow up, they are more likely to agree that no one really understands them.
As one egg-donor-conceived woman stated about her biological mother:
“She is my real mother. … She abandoned me, and you encouraged it because you couldn’t have your own biological child. To call her nothing but an egg cell is a disrespect to my identity as a person. … She is the woman who gave me life. And no amount of contracts, technology, emotional manipulation, and money is ever going to rip her eye colors from my irises, or her dimples off my cheeks, or her lips off my smile, or tear her out of my DNA. She is my ancestor. She is my foremother. … The bond we have is almost like the bond I have with God. Thank goodness I got the chance to meet her. Thank goodness I got the chance to call her ‘mom.’ Thank goodness I got the chance to forgive her for being a poor single mother who didn’t have any other option to support her family but to sell her own children. … I see her and my father every time I look in the mirror. I see her smile, her laugh, and her strong will. You know what I don’t see? I don’t see the woman who bought me from a bank and forced me into her womb without my permission. And I definitely do not see the money and the contracts hiding my mother’s features.”
The reproductive technology industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry that profits off of the commodification of human lives, many of them very brief. Contrary to the beliefs of many, reproductive technologies are not simply about “creating new life,” but are also about sacrificing millions of children to their deaths in the belief that adults have a “right” to children.
Pope Benedict XVI stated that, “These procedures are contrary to the human dignity proper to the embryo, and at the same time they are contrary to the right of every person to be conceived and to be born within marriage and from marriage.”
Human beings are entrusted with the gift of life and are called to stewardship over this gift. The obligation of the gift of human life requires that we never lose respect, then, for life’s God-given nature, a reverent respect that requires us to stop well short of manipulating life at its beginning or its end. Children have an inherent right to be conceived within the one flesh conjugal union of their mothers and fathers, not treated as commodities with which to experiment however we wish. For our country to truly be pro-family and pro-child, in vitro fertilization should not be pushed by any politician claiming to be “pro-life.”
