The Immorality of Creating Children through IVF

Reproductive rights advocates reacted with anger and indignance upon hearing the February 16, 2024, Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos created through in vitro fertilization are children.¹ They rightly understood that a law’s affirmation that preborn babies are human children could not only change the IVF practices of US fertility clinics but might also lead to abortion bans. Even Republicans jumped to defend the fertility treatment, declaring that IVF is “pro-family” and “pro-life.”² 

However, scratch the surface of the multi-million-dollar IVF industry, and you will find a web of ethical problems. 

What is IVF? 

IVF is an invasive treatment that attempts to help infertile couples conceive a child. First, the woman receives hormones to stimulate her ovaries to mature many eggs rather than the typical single egg produced monthly. Then, mature eggs are harvested and fertilized with sperm in a lab. One or more fertilized eggs, called embryos, are then transferred to the womb. 

Before the doctor makes this transfer, the parents can have the embryos screened for potential genetic disorders and/or to choose the sex of the child. Often, there are embryos who are not transferred, and parents must determine what they will do with them; they can freeze them, discard them, or donate them. 

Because a human being exists from the moment of fertilization, all three choices pose ethical dilemmas.

Rev. Jim Harden, CEO of CompassCare Pregnancy Services, writes extensively on medical ethics. He shared with Celebrate Life Magazine that “IVF creates approximately a million embryos a year, and nearly 90% of them are destroyed or frozen.” Rev. Harden stated that since the first successful IVF procedure in 1978, more babies have died because of IVF than through abortion.

The death of embryonic children occurs during four points in the IVF process:

• Culling: Children who don’t meet the right genetic criteria, including babies with Down syndrome or other genetic conditions, are destroyed. 
• Transfer: A clinician places one or more embryos into the mother. Not all embryos who are transferred will survive.  
• Multiples: Because some embryos may fail to implant, the clinician will often transfer multiple babies to increase the chances of success. If more than one embryo successfully implants in the womb, or if an embryo splits to produce twins, one or more babies may be aborted; this is called “selective reduction.”³
• Extra: Remaining IVF embryos are cryopreserved, and some may not survive freezing or thawing.

As Rev. Harden explained, “They’re creating human embryos like a commodity. They’re assessing these human embryos as if they were some sort of product.” 

Lost and destroyed

Despite the high number of fertilized embryos, only a fraction—approximately 2%—of US births result from IVF.⁴ Meanwhile, their brothers and sisters remain trapped in a frozen limbo—one that is often unsafe.

Dr. Gerard Letterie, a reproductive endocrinologist, notes the unreliability of “fertility freezers”—a technology that is over six decades old. He writes, “These subzero containers are poorly regulated, no better by some accounts than kitchen appliances or farm tools. The bulk vats were developed in the 1960s to store livestock semen for breeding.”⁵

Dr. Letterie says nearly 500 fertility clinics nationwide store embryos and eggs using outdated technology. For example, in 2018, two catastrophes happened during the same weekend. A storage vat failed at the Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco, destroying about 3,500 frozen eggs and embryos,⁶ and a Cleveland facility lost 4,000 eggs and embryos⁷ due to human error. In 2023, Bloomberg investigated the Kindbody fertility chain,⁸ uncovering countless mislabeled, lost, or accidentally destroyed eggs and embryos. 

Since IVF practices are only required to report successes, the true extent of errors is unknown. A study that reviewed global legal cases related to IVF found that specimen mix-ups are the most common error at embryo storage facilities.⁹ There are also many cases of clinics transferring the wrong embryos during IVF procedures.¹⁰ 

Along with errors, the process of IVF gives clinicians the opportunity to tamper with clients’ eggs, sperm, and embryos. Even the creator of IVF was found to have secretly used donor sperm for some patients.¹¹ 

These cases illustrate the fact that, even when it’s successful, IVF can cause devastation.

Frozen embryos 

According to Johns Hopkins, an estimated 1.5 million babies sit in freezers across the US.¹² Dr. Letterie explains that a lot of parents are unsure of or ambivalent about what to do with their frozen children. While not a pro-life proponent, he speaks to inherent problems with cryopreservation, saying there is a greater likelihood that parents will stop paying the storage fee the longer the children remain frozen. High storage fees contribute to the problem too. For example, Pacific Fertility Center Los Angeles charges $500–$1,000 annually.¹³ If clinics don’t receive payment, they must decide what happens to the children abandoned in their care.¹⁴

Parents do have the option of “donating,” or placing for adoption, those embryonic children they have created. While a more ethical option than unending cryopreservation, embryo donation is unlikely to save the millions of babies who are or will be frozen. Dr. Letterie reports that only 15% of IVF patients will consider this option because “many families take a narrow view of having their embryos at large with no control over their destiny.” He also explains that parents looking to adopt an embryonic child were reluctant “to use embryos that were generated from an infertile couple where the embryos’ implantation potential is unclear.”

Additionally, many parents donate their “unwanted” embryos to medical facilities for research, which always results in the baby’s death.¹⁵ Only the researchers involved know exactly what kind of scientific study each baby gives her life for.

Unitive and procreative 

The Catholic Church deems IVF immoral on two grounds: First, it’s a highly abortive technology, and second, it separates the unitive aspect of the sexual union from the procreative. With IVF, a husband and wife are not coming together in love to make a child but are entrusting “the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists,” establishing “domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2377).¹⁶

IVF acts against the dignity of the parents and the child. The papal document Donum Vitae reaffirms what the CCC lays out regarding IVF.¹⁷ While sympathetic toward infertile couples, it says that the Church remains opposed to IVF because “such fertilization is in itself illicit and in opposition to the dignity of procreation and of the conjugal union.”

Donum Vitae stresses that Catholics must treat everyone with dignity, including the smallest human, and that no one has the right to use preborn babies as an “instrument for the advantage of others.”

Laws cannot deny personhood to embryos

Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, PhD, senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, affirmed the truth that we all began as embryos.¹⁸ In an article about IVF, he wrote, “We are all embryos who have grown up, and if all men are created equal, then all embryos are human beings, each of whom ought to be unconditionally safeguarded and never exploited.”

Despite all the evidence that life begins at fertilization, too many scientists overlook this reality. Maureen L. Condic, author of Untangling Twinning: What Science Tells Us about the Nature of Human Embryos, notes that those scientists whose livelihoods depend on IVF and human embryo experimentation are more likely to hold that human life does not begin at fertilization.¹⁹ She says it’s a profession that cares more about utility than ethical considerations.

Like scientists, courts also struggle with the question “When does life begin?” because they’re not looking at current scientific evidence, and many are politically motivated to ignore it. Lawyers still use the landmark case Davis v. Davis to argue against personhood.²⁰ In this decision, the Tennessee Supreme Court gave the embryo a legal status that lands somewhere between personhood and property. 

Lawyer Rita Lowery Gitchell later wrote an 89-page brief arguing against courts using outdated science to deny personhood to embryos.²¹ She told Celebrate Life Magazine, “It’s important that human beings are not classified as property and subject to contract. Making human beings subject to contract allows corporations to own human beings.” 

On February 18, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order expanding access to IVF for Americans, making it more accessible and affordable.²² 

Judie Brown, president of American Life League, said that she hopes President Trump will “ultimately overturn his Executive Order, revisit the moral and ethical questions surrounding IVF, and put in place a government program to focus attention on moral and ethical alternatives to infertility that do not include killing embryonic people.”  

One of those alternatives is NaProTechnology.

An ethical option

NaProTechnology (Natural Procreative Technology) offers a moral alternative to IVF with higher pregnancy success rates.²³ Unlike IVF, NaProTechnology treats underlying conditions causing infertility. It was developed by Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, founder and director of the Saint Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction in Omaha, Nebraska.²⁴ This groundbreaking science works cooperatively with a woman’s body, utilizing the Creighton Model FertilityCare™ System—a method of charting the fertility cycle—with medical and surgical protocols to help women conceive. The Institute sponsors 250 fertility care centers in the US. 

NaProTechnology offers a much-needed paradigm shift away from IVF, as it is a science that improves women’s health and aids fertility while upholding the dignity of marriage and human life. 

NaProTechnology has a much higher success rate than IVF, as it treats the root cause of infertility. Research shows that “NaProTechnology is nearly three times more successful than IVF for assisting infertile couples, multiple pregnancy rates are ten times lower than the national average, and prematurity rates have been cut from 12.1% to 7%.”²⁵

When all is said and done, God has designed the procreative acts of parents as the best and most ethical way to bring children into the world. For those who are unable to conceive on their own, there are alternatives that do not include accepting babies created in petri dishes, filtered for flaws and discarded like trash.  

God’s way respects human persons; reproductive technology commodifies them.  

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1. LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, P.C., No. SC-2022-0515 (Ala. Feb. 16, 2024),law.justia.com/cases/alabama/supreme-court/2024/sc-2022-0579.html.
2. Lexie Schapitl, “How IVF Is Complicating Republicans’ Abortion Messaging,” NPR, March 16, 2024, npr.org/2024/03/16/1238966404/how-ivf-is-complicating-republicans-abortion-messaging.
3. Michael Usher, “The Impossible Choice,” 60 Minutes Australia, Nine Network, May 20, 2012, youtube.com/watch?v=T7JXMIZ8fPA.
4. Madeline Holcombe, “About 2% of Babies Born in the US Are from IVF. Here’s What You Need to Know About It,” CNN, February 21, 2024, cnn.com/2024/02/21/health/ivf-egg-freezing-explainer-wellness/index.html.
5. Gerard Letterie and Dov Fox, “Legal Personhood and Frozen Embryos: Implications for Fertility Patients and Providers in Post-Roe America,” Journal of Law and the Biosciences 10, no. 1 (January–June 2023), ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10200124.
6. “$15M Awarded to Five People Who Lost Eggs, Embryos at Fertility Clinic,” The Associated Press, June 10, 2021, apnews.com/article/health-a01ce403b5a504f7529b4a9bff337b149.
7. Holly Yan, “A Cleveland Fertility Clinic That Lost 4,000 Eggs and Embryos Just Got Hit with 2 More Lawsuits,” CNN, February 5, 2020, cnn.com/2020/02/05/us/ohio-fertility-clinic-lost-eggs-embryos-lawsuits/index.html.
8. Jackie Davalos, “Embryo Errors, Flooded Clinics: Kindbody and IVF’s Risky Business,” Yahoo Finance, October 14, 2023, finance.yahoo.com/news/embryo-mix-ups-flooded-clinics-100010717.html.
9. Anar Murphy and Michael Collins, “Legal Case Study of Severe IVF Incidents Worldwide: Causes, Consequences, and High Emotional, Financial, and Reputational Costs to Patients and Providers,” North American Proceedings in Gynecology & Obstetrics 3, no. 3 (2024), napgo.org/article/118936-legal-case-study-of-severe-ivf-incidents-worldwide-causes-consequences-and-high-emotional-financial-and-reputational-costs-to-patients-and-provid.
10. Doc Louallen, et al., “Inside IVF Mix-Ups That Left Women Carrying Embryos That Weren’t Theirs,” ABC News, March 7, 2025, abcnews.go.com/Health/inside-ivf-mix-ups-left-women-carrying-embryos/story?id=119429927.
11. Elizabeth Ivens, “IVF Pioneer Used Sperm From ‘Lots’ of Medical Staff – and Kept No Records of the Babies They Fathered,” Mail Online, December 22, 2024, dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14218065/IVF-pioneer-used-sperm-medical-staff-no-records.html. 
12. “The Alabama Supreme Court’s Ruling on Frozen Embryos,” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, February 27, 2024, publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/the-alabama-supreme-courts-ruling-on-frozen-embryos.
13. “IVF Cost in California,” Pacific Fertility Center Los Angeles, August 9, 2024, pfcla.com/blog/ivf-costs-california.
14. Mary Pflum, “Nation’s Fertility Clinics Struggle with a Growing Number of Abandoned Embryos,” NBC News, August 12, 2019, nbcnews.com/health/features/nation-s-fertility-clinics-struggle-growing-number-abandoned-embryos-n1040806.
15. “Donating to Research,” Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority, hfea.gov.uk/donation/donors/donating-to-research.
16. Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, Online Version, 1993, vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM.
17. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Vitae: Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation: Replies to Certain Questions of the Day, 1987, vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19870222_respect-for-human-life_en.html.
18. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, “Making Sense of Bioethics: Column #217: Poking the Hornet’s Nest of IVF,” The National Catholic Bioethics Center, March 29, 2024, ncbcenter.org/making-sense-of-bioethics-cms/column-217-poking-the-hornets-nest-of-ivf.
19. Maureen Condic, Untangling Twinning: What Science Tells Us about the Nature of Human Embryos, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020.
20. Davis v. Davis, No. 842 S.W.2d 588 (Tenn. 1992), law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/supreme-court/1992/842-s-w-2d-588-2.html.
21. Rita Lowery Gitchell, “Should Legal Precedent Based on Old, Flawed, Scientific Analysis Regarding When Life Begins, Continue to Apply to Parental Disputes Over the Fate of Frozen Embryos, When There Are Now Scientifically Known and Observed Facts Proving Life Begins at Fertilization?,” DePaul J. Health Care Law 20, no. 1 (2018), via.library.depaul.edu/jhcl/vol20/iss1/2.
22. US President, Executive Order “Expanding Access to in Vitro Fertilization,”  The White House, February 19, 2025, whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/expanding-access-to-in-vitro-fertilization.
23. “NaProTechnology,” naprotechnology.com.
24. “Saint Paul VI Institute,” saintpaulvi.com.
25. Cecilia Cerven, “Exploration of the Effectiveness of NaProTechnology Women’s Healthcare,” Undergraduate Honors Project, Grand Valley State University, scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1765&context=honorsprojects.