pat loughery

My wife and I are infertile. Our daughter – that perfect little curly-red-headed cherub that I post pictures of here occasionally came to us via open adoption. She’s the absolute light of our lives. Before choosing to adopt, we had worked with a fertility specialist, but had chosen to stop short of in-vitro fertilization.

Recently – a few months ago, perhaps, we found that there had been some advances in in-vitro fertilization techniques used by our doctor, and some of the objections that we had with IVF weren’t an issue anymore.

In a nutshell, here’s IVF: Stimulate the woman’s ovaries to produce as many healthy eggs as possible. Release them, then extract them surgically. Meanwhile, get the man’s donation as well. Wash sperm and eggs, place them together for fertilization, then either implant the embryos back into the woman or freeze them for future use. The entire process is – for the woman in particular – really draining. Lots of blood tests, balancing a variety of medications to stop/start/trigger/stabilize hormonal imputs, etc.

We had three specific objections to IVF:

1. Embryo freezing. Our ethical belief is that conception is the moment that human life begins. So, freezing embryos is freezing a human life (even though it’s in an incredibly early form). Normally an IVF results in 15-25 embryos created and 3-6 of them are implanted into the woman at a time, so the rest are frozen to be used later or discarded. To us, we’re uneasy with cryogenically preserved life, and discarding embryos is discarding children.

2. Selective Reduction. In previous forms of IVF, a large number (4-15?) of embryos were implanted, then as the system stabilized, any embryos over the number of actual wanted live birth children were removed from the system. This happens less frequently now, as researchers have found that the uterus can become overcrowded and the embryos don’t grow healthily until that reduction happens. To us, selective reduction is analagous to really early term abortion.

3. The cost. When we did our adoption, the cost of a single round of IVF was about $10k, which was roughly equivalent to an in-state adoption using an adoption agency for advertising, matching, counseling, etc.

In the last 2 years, selective reduction doesn’t happen much anymore, and researchers are finding ways to cryogenically preserve (read: freeze) eggs in addition to embryos. We have no ethical dilemma with freezing eggs for use at a later attempt. And our doctor offered us a “scholarship” from the drug companies to significantly reduce the cost of the process. All of which looked like A God Thing.

So we’ve re-entered the IVF process. We’re actually quite close to the extraction/fertilization/implantation process. But the system isn’t stabilizing; we’re experiencing hormonal imbalances.

Our doctor is recommending that we create embryos, freeze them and stabilize the system, then come back in 2 or 3 months to implant them.

So we’re desperately seeking the Lord’s guidance. At what point is cryogenically preserving embryos OK? At what point is it not? How do we weigh risk and probabilities of success when it relates to our future children?

Bioethics is a practial concern for us, not a pie-in-the-sky research subject.

We could certainly use prayer.