My Problem With IVF: Your Stories And Thoughts

We hear from many readers who underwent IVF.

Two members of the French group “Association des Parents et futurs parents Gays et Lesbiens” (APGL). Following three artificial inseminations attempt, they decided to try IVF, resulting in this 5-month-old baby. (BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty)

(This week’s Dish is shorter than our usual edition, due to my last-minute trip to England to be with my dying mother. I touch on that visit in the podcast page we are publishing shortly, along with my comments on the UK election and Biden’s disastrous debate.)

After my recent column, “My Problem With IVF — And Ours,” we ran many dissents and more debate over the procedure and its implications for the frozen embryos that aren’t implanted. Below, many readers share their own experiences with IVF. Here’s a blunt dissent from “a Dish reader since 2003”:

As you doubtless expected, the responses to your position will be full of passionate intensity and disgust, and I’m trying hard to maintain a level of composure over your cruel and callous position. My 11-month-old daughter is sleeping next to me as I write this, a product of IVF. I believe your conclusion — and the fundamentalism inherent in it — is an example of the consequence of extremist beliefs.

No, IVF is the opposite of “evil”. IVF is the expression of love in the purest, most selfless sense. It is ensuring that new souls enter the world — not discarding them.

Something to consider in your position is that not every embryo is viable, and not every embryo will “take” once it is transferred into the uterus. My wife and I had seven embryos after her procedure. Of those, four were genetically unviable. Of the three, the first two were transferred and failed to develop. Only the last one implanted and became our daughter.

Embryos are not souls. They are not guaranteed to “be” anything. Even ones deemed genetically viable may still fail during implantation for no clear reason. You cannot assert or assume that frozen embryos represent actual people “waiting” to be born.

Not everyone does genetic testing in advance like my wife and I did. So, of that 600,000 number you quote, many (probably more than half) are not even viable to begin with. Of the remaining, another third or more wouldn’t even implant. You don’t know which ones those are, or not.

You also callously dismiss the emotional devastation of infertility. It’s not just an end-state; it is a miserable existence of failure after failure, a growing emptiness creating a void within you that eats away at your soul. It is a type of hell to be there. I know from experience.

It is a mistake to value the “souls” of blastocysts more than the suffering of fully formed people here and now. The suffering is 100% real and guaranteed. We have a scientific solution that, for most, will remove that suffering (though it doesn’t work for all people). IVF was a godsend to me and millions of other families.

Another dissent comes from “a (paying) Dishhead for as long as I can remember”:

As a father of twins conceived through IVF after multiple failed transfers and many years of trying other methods, I need to speak up about your essay. You argued that IVF is morally problematic due to the creation and potential discarding of embryos, but to be perfectly blunt, I feel it comes from basic ignorance and misinformation.

Infertility is incredibly challenging and emotionally draining. For many couples, the inability to conceive naturally leads to profound psychological distress. According to the CDC, about 12 percent of women aged 15 to 44 in the United States have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term. IVF offers hope where there was none, allowing couples to achieve their dream of having children.

IVF isn’t just a technical process; it’s a lifeline for those of us yearning to become parents. For many of us, it’s the only option left after exhausting other methods. My twins are a testament to the miracles IVF can achieve. They’re not just products of a medical procedure, but cherished individuals who bring immeasurable joy and purpose to our lives.

I understand the ethical concerns about creating and discarding embryos, but we need to look at the bigger picture. Natural conception also involves the loss of embryos. Up to 60 percents of all conceptions fail to implant in the uterus, often without the woman even realizing she was pregnant. This natural attrition shows that embryo loss is a part of human reproduction, not unique to IVF. If you believe in God, as I know you do, then you must consider that God made that decision, not the woman. Is God evil?

Scientifically, there’s a big difference between an embryo and a person. You mention this in your piece, but I feel like it should be repeated: an embryo, especially in the early stages, lacks the characteristics we associate with personhood, such as sentience, consciousness, and the ability to feel pain. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a fetus doesn’t have the capacity to experience pain until at least 24 weeks of gestation. The embryos used in IVF are at a much earlier stage and don’t possess these capacities.

A screen-grab showing the cell-division of two fertilized human embryos during the fourth day of development following IVF treatment. (Jim Dyson/Getty Images)

IVF isn’t about playing God or discarding life. It’s about creating life where it would otherwise be impossible.

IVF embryos hold the potential for life, but potential isn’t the same as actuality. The decision to freeze or discard embryos is made with careful consideration and often involves ethical and emotional deliberations. Many parents choose to donate unused embryos to other couples, giving them the chance to experience the joy of parenthood. IVF has led to the birth of over 10 million babies worldwide. These children are deeply loved and valued, and their existence enriches our society.

Thanks for allowing my dissent, and for continuing to bring to light to subjects that need discussion.

From another IVF dad:

I have a six-week-old daughter conceived through IVF who otherwise couldn’t possibly exist, so my bias is clear. That said, I reject your characterization of the moral standing of embryos. The chance for a live birth of any individual embryo is, at best, 50-60%. I have seven idle embryos sitting in a freezer in NYC, and it kills me to think most of them will never have the chance to find or lose love, among an array of other wonders in life.

But they are not humans; they are potentially viable humans, and the combination of “potentially” and “viable” create enough uncertainty that the liminal moral space in which they exist is tolerable when the countervailing benefit is that my wife and I have the chance to raise our precious Charlotte.

And another IVF dad:

I write as a father of two — the younger being the product of four rounds of IVF. I estimate that around 15-18 fertilized eggs (zygotes) were implanted in several batches, exactly one of which survived. That one just finished kindergarten, and he gives me hugs every day. The idea that we would regret our IVF process somehow is absurd.

We never gave much thought to the 14-odd sibling-zygotes that didn’t make it.  This is partly because — as you mention — natural human reproduction has similar attrition; we just don’t see it. In our case, all 14+ were implanted, so they also expired outside our line of sight, but expire they did! But it would not move me much if only some had been implanted, and we had a few “extras” that had to be “disposed of” somehow outside the womb. I know some folks wring their hands about involving more human agency if they die on the outside, but result is exactly the same. Shrug. 

This next dad is more torn:

Your column hit really close to home for me. My eldest child was born via IVF more than two years ago, after three failed embryo implantations. We still have six embryos “banked”. I cannot tell you the number of times I have thought about those embryos and felt a deep sense of unease related to the notion of “discarding” them. My wife and I have discussed numerous times, to no conclusion, what on earth to do with the remaining embryos. So I share your uneasiness on a deeply visceral level.

That being said, I can also recognize that my uneasiness (and yours) is not a rational one, but an entirely emotional one ... and frankly, it does not withstand scrutiny. Most embryos are retrieved and frozen on day 3 to day 5 post-fertilization. A day-3 embryo is 7-10 cells with no cell differentiation, and on day 5 is about 150 cells with an inner cell mass and an outer cell mass. In a “natural” pregnancy, this embryo would not even have implanted on the uterine wall yet. Forget this embryo having no mind and no sentience; there aren’t even the beginnings of cells that we could call a brain, spinal cord, organs, limbs, head, torso. There is nothing that could resemble a human being.

Yes, I get it that if you transfer this clump of cells into a uterus, it might implant on the uterine wall, develop into a fetus, and then wind up a baby. But calling a day-5 embryo human life suggests that you believe human life and the human soul exists the moment of fertilization. If that is the case, then I remain far more uneasy about natural conception — the percentage of fertilized eggs that don’t make it to live birth is estimated to be upwards of 75 percent! That means that 75 percent of all human souls are eliminated. That seems far more disturbing to me than IVF. 

So I do not dismiss your uneasiness. In fact I share it. But I think we have to be clear about what we are defining as human life. While this might seem a rationalization to you, I arrive here: given the stage of development in which these embryos are actually frozen, and if we consider those embryos human life, then natural conception is far more casual about discarding the inviolable soul than is IVF. 

From a gay dad who used a surrogate:

My husband and I used IVF and gestational surrogacy to create our family. We selected an egg donor and paid her handsomely for 20 eggs. After fertilizing half with my husband’s sperm and half with mine, nine embryos progressed to the blastocyst stage and were deemed suitable for implantation. 

We chose a gestational surrogate and prepared to implant our embryos. When we were finalizing our surrogacy contract, we agreed that the surrogate had the right to terminate the pregnancy at any time. 

We also agreed that the surrogate would undergo a “selective reduction” if the embryos split, which caused much heartache for me. My husband thought it strange at the time, but it was very difficult for me to sign off on that. For all of my professed liberal attitudes on choice, it was quite different when the option came to me personally. As a gay man, it was not something that I thought I would face. Yes, it was the surrogate’s body, but it was also my child. 

Luckily, this choice never came before us. But the entire experience was an emotional roller coaster. After two pregnancies and two miscarriages, we had lost four of our nine embryos. 

We ultimately celebrated the births of our daughters in 2018 and 2022. When we decided that our family was complete, my husband discarded his remaining two embryos and I faced another tough choice: I had one embryo left, and I could not bring myself to discard it — to discard her. I wanted to give her a fighting chance.