The Ethics of Fertility Treatments

This Slate article on IVF appeared a few weeks ago, but is worth revisiting for the ethical questions it raises. The author makes the case that fertility doctors should encourage couples struggling to have children to go “straight to IVF,” rather than first trying fertility medication and, then, artificial insemination (known as IUI). Usually IVF is the last option, but the author argues that since fertility treatments are so costly, and older women have limited window in which to conceive, the doctors should choose the most efficient treatment. Yet IVF is also the most ethically problematic of the treatments addressed–a fact that is never addressed in the article. During IVF treatments, doctors create several embryos, and implant a select number (usually two or three) in the woman’s uterus. The rest are either discarded, or frozen at the couple’s request. For a variety of reasons, the church is againstboth IUI and IVF. Yet one could make the case–as some ethicists have–that IUI is not nearly as ethically troubling as IVF, and could be used in certain circumstances. So if science is moving away from fertility meds and IUI in favor of IVF, what is a thoughtful Catholic to do? Fertility clinics in this country are already producing hundreds of thousands of unused embryos. (Unlike in some other countries, there is no regulation of the fertility industry here.) An increase in IVF treatments will make this number grow even larger. Politicians and ethicists were ecstatic when scientists announced they could create and study stem cells without using embryos. Yet what was once proposed as the primary source for those tests–embryos produced by fertility clinics–continue to grow unabated. All in all, the ethical problems surrounding the creation and use of embryos seem far from settled. Tim Reidy