Thorny Issues of In-Vitro-Fertilization (IVF)

This ruling in Alabama that embryos are children continues to shed some additional information on the topic that I’m guessing most of us never thought about.  I’m continuing to form my opinion on the topic as I honestly hadn’t given it much thought and honestly don’t know enough about it.  But I can say one thing for sure;  when doctors can start selecting embryos for sex, height, eye color and other factors like intelligence or looks, we are entering into a realm that we aren’t qualified to occupy.  And when a couple demands the doctor adhere to their wishes or “we’ll jus abort it”, something is terribly wrong.

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Vitaly Kushnir’s fertility clinic offers to screen an embryo to predict a baby’s sex, but the service can lead to ethically murky territory, like when a couple wanted it so their first child could be a boy.

It struck him as a sexist motive, he said, and initially he declined. But the couple pushed back, saying that they would simply abort the baby if it was a girl. “I’m not in the business of bringing in unwanted children,” said Kushnir, who owns West Coast Fertility Centers and teaches at the University of California at Irvine. Kushnir, who ultimately agreed to the couple’s wishes, said he thinks there should be some restrictions on selecting a baby’s sex, but in the United States, there aren’t any.

The Alabama Supreme Court’s surprise ruling in February that frozen embryos are legally children has sparked new scrutiny of in vitro fertilization, a common procedure responsible for about 2 percent of births a year in the United States. Alabama lawmakers swiftly responded with legislation aimed at protecting IVF providers and patients from criminal or civil liability, which the governor signed this week. But the firestorm has reopened ethical questions surrounding the procedure, particularly at a time when would-be parents can choose everything from sex to eye color.

Polls show Americans widely support the procedure and other interventions to help people expand their families. But unlike some other countries, the United States hasn’t regulated screening an embryo’s sex or other traits, like intelligence and height. That has left patients and doctors to navigate thorny ethical questions on their own.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/07/alabama-ivf-sex-selection-ethics/