Recently, Mother Jones ran a pair of articles (here and here) on the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos produced via IVF procedures should be considered children, in effect criminalizing the routine destruction of unused or “defective” embryos. The articles lament the perceived unjust consequences of treating human embryos as people. The authors, Kiera Butler and Katie Herchenroeder, warn of domestic violence, policing of women, and the financial burden of storing frozen embryos indefinitely, all as result of this court ruling.
Herchenroeder interviewed Dr. Michele Bratcher Goodwin, author of Policing the Womb, who argues:
What we see in a decision like this is this alarming disregard for the constitutional citizenship of women, but also more than that, it means a disregard for the lives of the most vulnerable people who most cry out for civil liberties and civil rights and to be respected under the law. It’s LGBTQ couples who are also vulnerable here. It’s women who lack fertility who are implicated in this. And in terms of criminal policing, the communities that are more likely to be surveilled, more likely to experience the harshest blows of the law, are always, unfortunately, going to be poor people.
The arguments here against the court’s IVF decision focus on the negative impacts this decision will have on women, poor people, infertile couples, and LGBTQ+ couples, as IVF clinics halt fertilization of embryos for fear of the legal consequences. I can readily understand Mother Jones’ concern for the welfare of these people. However, the trouble is that all of this is a red herring. The question isn’t “What uncomfortable or inconvenient effects flow from the court’s decision?” The question is “Is the basic premise of the court’s decision (that a fetus or embryo is a human person, no matter the stage of development) true?”
Mother Jones doesn’t approach the issue from that angle. The science is pretty clear (see here and here), and there are also convincing philosophical and moral arguments in support of fetal personhood. So, instead, the conversation must be diverted into pity-based arguments over the hardship some people may face due to this court decision. But that really isn’t pertinent when it comes to whether or not the ruling was correct and in accordance with reality.
For example, suppose I have a wealthy relative who has named me as his sole heir (due to my charm and good looks). Suppose further that I happen to be having a rough time, financially—I lost my job, my house was foreclosed on, and I’ve been forced to live with my (beautiful) wife and (adorable) baby in someone’s chicken coop. There’s a real risk of starvation or street (or chicken) violence. It would be wonderfully beneficial if my aged relative were to die at this moment and give me my inheritance. Should I have the right to kill him so as to avoid all these painful realities for myself and my family? Of course, basically no one would answer “yes” to that question. I could go on and on, weeping before the judge about just how awful my life was due to the fact that this aged relative lived so long, but I’d be laughed out of the courtroom.
When it comes to the question of human life, we have no choice but to preserve it, no matter how uncomfortable, unpleasant, inconvenient, painful, or even tragic the outcome may be. Piling on nightmare scenarios or sob stories related to the consequences of treating unborn babies (at any stage of development) as babies, is, quite simply, irrelevant.
I don’t mean to diminish the suffering that may come to people who are unable to conceive children due the unavailability of IVF in Alabama or elsewhere. Infertility is no joke, and my heart goes out to everyone who has had to bear that cross, not least of all because my wife and I have struggled with infertility issues ourselves. But no amount of emotional pain on our part would warrant the violation of the rights of another human being. I can also say, from personal experience, that IVF is far from the only treatment for infertility, as Mother Jones seems to imply. Most importantly, let’s not twist such people’s pain for political ends, and let’s not disrespect their pain by suggesting that they ease it by behaving irresponsibly toward others (their unborn children, the frozen embryos, for example).
Perhaps “getting what I want”—in this case a baby—should not trump all other considerations. Sometimes, we have to accept that the answer is “no.” And “getting what I want” at all costs may harm not only me, but others as well. As Shakespeare’s Macbeth learned, placing one’s desires and ambitions above all moral considerations leads down the road to misery.
There is also nothing inconsistent with the Christian standpoint on this issue, despite Butler’s question: “To many, the basic premise underlying the Alabama decision seemed contradictory: Don’t anti-abortion activists want people to have more babies?”
Of course, Christianity, as a religion of life predicated on the fundamental goodness of being promotes the idea of large families. But it is the respect for and preservation of unborn children’s lives that is the motivating principle in the objection to both IVF and abortion. If it’s wrong to deprive an unborn baby of life, whether in the womb or in a lab, it’s also wrong to participate in activities that will inevitably end in that scenario. In other words, Christianity teaches that you can’t use morally questionable means (IVF) for a good end (bringing babies into the world).
However misguided Butler may be, she does raise some very legitimate questions at the end of her article, such as
Who will pay for the indefinite storage of the hundreds of thousands of embryos in freezers at IVF clinics across the country? Could IVF patients be forced to choose between using all of their frozen embryos themselves or ‘adopting’ them out to strangers? If these embryos are all considered to be babies, what other rights do they enjoy? And if a mistake should result in their destruction, what are the consequences?
These are serious problems with no easy answers, and I applaud Butler for raising them, if she did so in good faith. Yet Butler and others on the pro-choice side seem to want to take the easy way out such ethical quagmires: Simply say that the unborn baby isn’t a human being, and, voila, these frightening and murky, moral questions vanish.
But simply shrugging off these questions because they’re difficult or scary is hardly a solution, especially when the reason for doing so—that embryos aren’t human beings—hasn’t been proven. Our failure as a society to consider such ethical and logistical angles before we began using IVF is hardly a justification for ignoring them now and redefining what life and humanity are in order to avoid the consequences of our societal choices in this matter.
Sooner or later, we have to face the music.
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Image credit: Unsplash
