This is a question I've always had. I know of many couples who have both successfully and unsuccessfully attempted to have children through in-vitro fertilization methods. The success rates for IVF are very low. Many embryos do not survive the thawing process (only 68 percent do), and then multiple embryos are implanted to ensure that, with luck, a single one will survive.

IVF is a process with extreme attrition rates for embryos. A couple volunteering for this procedure knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, they are going to support the creation of embryos, most of which will inevitably die. A person who considers abortion to be a 'holocaust' might even work in that type of industry.

Could someone consider themselves to be anti-abortion, yet work in this industry, or obtain a baby through such channels, with good conscious? Would that be hypocritical?

Do you have a specific example we should consider or is this just a hypothetical?

I can't answer the first question, because no one knows anothers conscious.

If they knew the facts and still participated, yes, it would be construed as hypocritical, in my opinion.

I think it has alot to do with the intention of the couple.In a abortion they attempt to destroy a life, while IVF is trying to create life that could not exist otherwise.

I agree with RevDelFuego. The goal of IVF is to ultimately create life. If an embryo dies, the parents will keep trying until they do get a successful fertilization and implantation. In abortion, an already fertilized and implanted embryo or a developing fetus is destroyed which would have otherwise developed into a life.

I suppose that people who are against abortion fundamentally would be hypocritical to support IVF. In both cases, fertilized embryos are destroyed, so if a person believes in human rights beginning at conception, they are both murder (or reckless negligence at least in the case of IVF).

I was inspired to start this topic because of freechildren's signature,"Anyone who supports abortion rights is a Holocaust denier". He designs "micro intensive care units" (I'm guessing, "improved" petri dishes or test tubes) for embryologists.

I'm simply curious how someone could so adamantly consider the zygote to be sacred, yet be directly involved in an industry with an attrition rate of 3 embryos dead to every living one.

I disagree. I think with IVF the main purpose is to serve one's desire for a life to be created for them. It is the serving of a couple's wants to have a child of their own..it is the creation of their possibility to do this. We can create life without the need of IVF..it is just that many people desire their child's life to be created in this fashion. I don't think it differs from abortion really. The couple is knowingly sacrificing other fetuses for their own desires. Much like a women will choose to have an abortion based on her own desires.

Mrs. Pigpen raises a good question that pops up in people's minds from time to time when they hear about my project to engineer sophisticated "micro intensive care units" (micro ICU's) for children who would otherwise be left to struggle in the haphazard environment of a crude petri dish in the context of in vitro fertilization programs. In vitro fertilization, or IVF as it is called, has a history of profound incompetence and unethical behavior. As a testament to the unprofessional sentiment that controls the ranks of IVF practitioners, key leaders of the IVF movement have refused to participate in the development of micro ICU's. Instead, they are content with crude petri dish methods, because for corrupt political reasons they insist on treating the children as "lab specimens".

Prenatal mortality in IVF programs is greater than 90%. That means that of 10 children conceived, on average less than one will survive to birth.

IVF has never gained the stature of a true medical discipline because its practitioners refuse to treat each child as a patient. Instead, for corrupt political reasons IVF practitioners insist that children are merely "lab specimens" when they begin life. Practitioners of IVF have lobbied strong and hard to deceive the public about the lives of children between fertilization and implantation, and they have promoted harmful acts against the children.

Perhaps no where in the history of science and medicine does the expression "incompetence chasing its own tail" so aptly apply as to the field of in vitro fertilization. Because IVF practitioners care inappropriately for children in crude petri dishes, mortality rates are very high. But rather than trying to reduce mortality, as would make sense to competent professionals, instead IVF practitioners choose to chase the tail of their own incompetence by fertilizing more children. They figure that if one child has a given probability of surviving, then having more children at once will overcome that probability so that at least one child will survive from time to time. But a woman only produces one, or rarely two, eggs during a given cycle. So to get more eggs to fertilize more babies, they have to give the woman a lot of chemicals to cause her to "superovulate", which means to produce more eggs than normal. These eggs are sometimes not as healthy as eggs produced in a regular cycle, and the chemicals used on the mother can hinder the conditions of her body in a way that makes it more difficult for the baby to implant successfully. For these reasons, even despite all of the babies who are fertilized (they typically transfer three or four of the petri dish survivors to the mother's body at once), only about 25% of couples will be able to take one of their babies home from the hospital in a car seat, because 75% of the time all of their babies who were fertilized will die before birth. Many die in the crude petri dishes, and others are left in too poor shape to implant.

Because of these horrific examples of medical malpractice, an effort is being made to get away from "in vitro fertilization" and to instead focus on "prenidial incubation". Babies before implantation may be called "prenids" which is derived by shortening of pre-nidation. Nidation is another word for implantation. Prenidial incubation means caring for babies outside the maternal body before they implant. Prenidial is pronounced "pre-nid-e-al". Prenidial incubation is just like neonatal incubation, except for prenids instead of neonates (newborns). But because prenids live in a fluid medium, the technology to care for them differs from the care of children who are postnidial (after implantation). That is because once the baby implants, the baby lives attached to the mother's body and has different needs.

Advances in prenidial care are needed to ensure that children will be treated as patients in a medical setting. As technology advances, medicine will be able to save prenidial children whose mothers die in car accidents, by transferring them to a prenidial incubator and then to a new mom. In some cases, the journey through the fallopian tube may be problematic, or the baby may be anticipated to require special care. In such cases, fertilization outside the maternal body may be indicated in order to provide the baby with the best health care. For reasons such at these, it is important for people to support competent medical practices, along with advances in engineering, in the context of prenidial intensive care.

Fortunately, we have the technology to do this. All it takes is the courage and discipline to apply it.

And, of course, our usual question when Freechildren posts his messages: got any links to back up your claims or are these just your opinion based on no backing information?