Good News Tucson - A Family Values Magazine

Pain of Infertility

Of all the difficulties that a husband and wife can possibly go through, the inability to conceive a baby may be the most distressing. The problem is very common: as many as 15 percent of all couples experience some form of infertility. Parenting, although among the most challenging of undertakings, is also the most rewarding. Many married couples also take seriously the biblical command for them to "be fruitful and multiply," and are distraught when they cannot. It is no wonder then that infertile couples are greatly distressed when they learn that their chances of conceiving a baby are unlikely.

After many trips to the doctor and a diagnosis of infertility, couples may quickly latch on to any hope that they may have for conceiving a child. For many infertile couples, their physician may suggest any number of possible courses of action, including in vitro fertilization or IVF. But what are some of the issues that couples should think about before deciding on this course of action?

IVF is a procedure in which a woman's eggs are harvested from her body, fertilized, then inserted into the womb. Since not all eggs can be successfully fertilized, and not every fertilized egg implants in the womb after insertion, a number of eggs are needed for the procedure. The woman's ovaries are coaxed into producing more than the usual number of eggs through hyperstimulation using fertility drugs and synthetic hormones. Sometimes this aspect of the treatment puts women at risk for ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome.

After the eggs are fertilized, they are allowed to mature for two or three days outside the mother's body. As many as four of the embryos are then placed in the womb, to help overcome the odds against implantation. But questions about the ethics of in vitro fertilization now come into play. Because not every embryo is selected for implantation, what should be done with the "extras"? If you believe that life begins at conception, with the fertilization of the egg, you also believe that the embryo is a unique human being with the genetic material of a very tiny individual.

Discarding the extras is, of course, out of the question if you hold such a belief. Chances are, the doctor will recommend that some embryos be frozen and held in reserve for future implantation attempts, but what if the current attempt succeeds with multiple births? What will you do with the embryos that are frozen? Are you prepared to have more children?

There is also the potential that a physician might recommend a "selective reduction" in the pregnancy. In other words, if IVF results in an unusually high number of successfully implanted embryos, the doctor may recommend that one or more of them be aborted to give the others a greater chance at survival and to minimize health risks to the mother.

Before agreeing to undergo in vitro fertilization, these are a few of the questions that you might want to prayerfully consider. Other potential options that you might want to consider, are foster parenting, adoption, and even embryo adoption, where a "left over" frozen embryo from another couple's IVF procedure is implanted in the womb, giving life to a baby that would not be born. There are an estimated 400,000 potentially adoptable frozen embryos in the United States. For more information on embryo adoption, visit www.snowflakes.org.

Brad Frese is the Research Director for The Center for Arizona Policy
www.azpolicy.org