Responding to objections about my recent criticisms of IVF.
Responding to objections about my recent criticisms of IVF.
I published a short Corner post last week that argued the commentary about AOC preparing to freeze her eggs ignores the important underlying question: Should IVF be allowed? My answer is no. The commenters largely expressed firm disagreement. I’ll address the most common objections and explain why I think they’re wrong. For some of these, I have lumped together comments that were thematically similar.
1. I’ll begin with the most substantive objection by quoting part of one comment: “Guard against the abuse. . . Minimal stimulation protocols, freezing eggs instead of embryos, and donating unused embryos rather than discarding them are all real options. That’s a regulatory and practice question, not an argument against IVF itself. What’s actually left is a values claim: that conception mediated by a lab is wrong, independent of waste or engineering. That’s a legitimate personal conviction, but it’s just that: an opinion, not an argument that binds anyone who doesn’t already share the premise.”
This is not exactly right, because I am not exclusively objecting to secondary effects of current IVF practices that can be prevented by appropriate policies.
Here’s a hypothetical: Every instance of IVF extracts exactly one egg, exactly one embryo is created from biological material of the married couple that will raise the embryo, that embryo will be implanted (regardless of its health or traits), and in this world with perfect technology, there is a 100 percent guarantee that the process will result in a live birth of that embryo.
This controls against eugenic preferences for particular embryos and further prevents creating any surplus embryos that will be indefinitely preserved or killed by disposal. So, is there still a problem with IVF? Yes, because the child is reduced to a commercial product that is purchased and owned.
We can strengthen the hypothetical, though. Even if the clinic performed free services and money never changed hands, the human child is still a product born from commercial transaction. The child is treated as a form of property whose “ownership” is negotiated and contractually agreed upon. (The child would belong to the parents in this hypothetical, not the clinic. But the alternative is not necessarily true in all real-world instances.)
Is this essentially a new and acceptable type of custody dispute? No. Custody disputes (like in divorce) and adoption reassign responsibility for a child whose existence is independent of that determination. IVF is different: The negotiations are a necessary precondition of the child’s being conceived, even if there is no charge for services. To put it plainly: Lengthy terms and conditions pages must be signed for the child to be conceived.
So IVF technology — even when controlling for secondary effects in a complex hypothetical — necessarily treats human beings as a commercial product and property, and this dynamic cannot be changed by any policy. This is distinct from the objection that “conception mediated by a lab is wrong.” Of course, there are seemingly endless other problems: Procreation has been reduced to a factory process divorced from the actualization of marriage, and we see children as objects to which we are entitled.
The commenter will deem my position as a “values claim,” but that isn’t disqualifying. Opposing eugenics and legally banning it is also a “values claim,” so what would be the justification for banning selective implantation but not IVF itself? Nearly all laws attempt to legislate morality, and the law cannot be morally neutral, so we must decide what morals it will enshrine.
2. The most intense comments went like this: My spouse and I tried very hard for years to conceive naturally, but we couldn’t, and now we have a child whom we love. There were similar anecdotes referencing family members or friends.
While I am sympathetic to families struggling to conceive, the moral questions remain. And there are a few (erroneous) assumptions embedded in those types of responses above.
First, as general point: Claims in the form of “I did X, and I’m happy with the result, so X should be legal,” or “X should be allowed because I’d be unhappy in a world without X” aren’t good structures for arguments or law.
More subtly, these comments reflect what I said previously about IVF framing children as something we are owed, a sentiment that flows from IVF treating children as a purchased product; these readers have conflated the yearning to be a parent with an entitlement to biological offspring — and nobody has that. Each of us has, at most, the right to try to bear offspring. Yet that right is subject to constraints: You need consent, you can’t have sex wherever you want, and you can’t use whatever means you want to achieve pregnancy. The good news, though, is that a couple can become parents even when they seemingly cannot naturally conceive. A person insisting on deserving access to IVF for the purposes of becoming a parent while rejecting adoption amounts to asserting an entitlement to biological offspring, rather than a desire or right to be a parent. (For what it is worth: Going forward, I hope all the preserved and unwanted embryos are donated to other couples, rather than used as material for experimentation in laboratories or just thrown out.)
The biggest flaw with these sorts of objections is the implicit framing or explicit declaration that “IVF was the only way [for us or another couple] to have a [biological] child.” An important point is overlooked: IVF seemed like the only option available to disappointed and desperate couples for conceiving biological offspring. But a couple that bore a child of their own genetic material without a surrogate is not infertile.
I dislike the word “infertility” because it is imprecise; it used to describe a woman in menopause, a woman who had a hysterectomy due to cancer, and someone with a curable reproductive disease — all of which are obviously very different in nature. More recently, homosexual couples started describing themselves as “infertile.” In 2023, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine revised its definition of “infertility” to include LGBTQ-identifying people and single people.
I think “infertile,” properly understood, describes a permanent condition.
The solution to what is broadly called “infertility” is treating the underlying causes when there is an illness, not using IVF to circumvent the health issue. (Actual infertility, like women in menopause, isn’t an illness to be cured but a state to be accepted.) Here’s one example: A CDC report showed that 6 percent of women in a cohort that collectively underwent 413,776 IVF cycles in 2021 said they chose IVF because they have endometriosis, while other reports estimate the figure is as high as 15 percent. Rather than doing IVF to bypass the disease, these women should undergo the surgery to remove endometriosis (more on this subject below).
This alternative should be the attractive option: It is cheaper, easier, less time-consuming, and ultimately beneficial to their overall health.
3. My opposition to IVF was construed to suggest I have animosity toward the people conceived through IVF.
Condemning the means does not necessarily condemn the end. When we condemn rape, we are not condemning the children born of rape. When I say IVF should not be permitted, that doesn’t morally judge the children born through IVF. A child isn’t responsible for the circumstances of its conception, and each member of the human family bears dignity.
I am not aware of an IVF critic who defends punishing the people who have used IVF, or the children born of IVF.
Rather than harbor resentment toward the children born of IVF, many IVF critics are motivated in part by concern for the more than 1 million preserved embryos — real human beings — who may be discarded as if they are medical waste. This is compassion, not animosity.
4. Some people argued IVF helps people have more babies, and given current demographic trends, this is a tool that could help save Western civilization.
Set aside that many “extra” embryos are deliberately killed, and disregard the data demonstrating that a majority of embryo transfers do not result in a live birth. (People might respond that achieving at least some births through IVF, even with casualties, is a net positive for society.)
Once again, the end goal — achieving a national birthrate that would sustain the country — does not justify the immoral means. For example, a low birth rate doesn’t justify a federal program that forcibly recruits healthy women and impregnates them.
5. Some people suggested I must hold the wrong views, or it would behoove me to adopt other views, because a) polling indicates my views are unpopular, b) no politician would espouse my views in an election cycle, and/or c) the Trump administration has advanced pro-IVF policies.
My allegiance is to the pursuit of truth, not social acceptance or a political party. More importantly, I wouldn’t hold most of my views if I valued societal approval over truth. I didn’t chant “BLACK LIVES MATTER” in 2020 for peer approval on campus. I didn’t hang a “HARRIS WALZ” sign on my balcony in my left-leaning neighborhood during the 2024 campaign cycle, nor did I fly a rainbow flag during “Pride Month.” My evaluations of an argument’s legitimacy do not involve weighting popularity, and I say what I think is true, regardless of how many other people think it is true.
6. People alleged that I hold these positions on IVF just because I’m Catholic, and my views cannot or should not be implemented in the law because they are religious.
At no point did I make any religious arguments, nor did I appeal to the authority of the Catholic Church, nor did I cite the scriptures. The Corner post was grounded in secular reasoning. If I weren’t Catholic, I would still hold these views; I believe this in part because I held pro-life views before I went to Mass regularly.
Even if my arguments were grounded in faith, that doesn’t automatically render them false. And if the law is somehow a sphere that must be independent of religious reasoning, then theft would have to be legal. (A brief tangent: It is astonishing how many people misunderstand “the separation of church and state.”)
7. People said I should stay out of discussions about IVF, leave people alone, and mind my own business.
My job is reducible to three obligations: 1) Report the news, 2) edit other people’s writing, and 3) share my opinion on things. There isn’t a contractual clause limiting me to discussing only what directly impacts me. Funnily enough, I don’t remember any readers commenting that I shouldn’t write about the mutilation branded as “gender-affirming care” because I haven’t had a double mastectomy.
8. Other readers said I specifically shouldn’t criticize IVF, claiming I don’t know anything about infertility because I a) am in my 20s, and/or b) am unmarried, and/or c) don’t know anyone who is infertile. Similarly, some people claim my view must result from unfamiliarity with IVF, people who struggled to conceive, or people conceived from IVF. The logic was that, if I were aware of the suffering these couples experienced or cared for an IVF-born person, then I would unwaveringly support IVF.
These comments are just baseless speculation. In the Free Press, I wrote about undergoing surgery for Stage Four endometriosis. And while there hasn’t been any practical reason yet to mention this publicly, I won’t hesitate to disclose that I’m prepping for another surgery. You won’t see any articles from me on September 14, unless they were written in advance, because I’ll be getting an MRI.
But forget all that because “lived experience” is a flimsy explanation for a particular view.
The idea that I have no expertise — let alone no familiarity — with IVF and (in)fertility is false. For Fairer Disputations, I profiled other women who suffered from endometriosis. And for my article “Golden Eggs” in the New Atlantis, I spoke to a woman preparing to sell her eggs, an adult born of IVF, medical professionals who work in reproductive medicine, and many others. For each article, there are lots of other people who either spoke to me off the record, or whose comments were removed from the final draft for one reason or another.
Ultimately, these criticisms lodged against me assume I’ll be persuaded by unfortunate experiences and tragic stories as opposed to data, reasoning, and evidence. My position, on IVF and every other topic, may evolve — but not because I heard sad anecdotes from friends or suffered personally. (I know this in part because, given my past with endometriosis, it is actually in my self-interest to support IVF.)
9. Some people suggested I was guilty of the slippery slope fallacy in response to my claim that IVF advances eugenics by allowing parents to select embryos worthy of implantation on the basis of preferred traits, including those that are cosmetic.
It isn’t an absurd slippery slope because it is already happening. Consider my article about the start-up Nucleus, which offers whole-genome sequencing and encourages parents to pick which of their kids they want — and by extension, the ones they don’t want. The Economist published a piece titled “In praise of designer-ish babies” on Friday, and the subheading is that “Couples should be allowed to select embryos on the basis of both disease resistance and IQ.”
10. Some people dismissed the arguments because they apparently sound mean. As one person wrote, “This is an incredibly cruel stance and article. . . I hope the author reconsiders this stance as she grows older and hopefully wiser.”
I suppose this is an apt moment for an announcement that will surely please everyone who wants me to have a different stance. Assuming my visa is approved, I’ll be returning to Oxford University this fall for the doctor of philosophy in law, where I’ll write a dissertation about the legal rights of preserved embryos. Perhaps my opinions on IVF will change entirely as I research it for years. After all, I’m always willing to engage in debate, and I’m always open to changing my views — but I will not do so in response to poignant testimonies about infertility, figures from polling, or conjectures about my own life.