Over the past 15 years, the birth rate in the United States has dropped from 2.1 births per woman to 1.66, well below the birth rate needed to keep the population stable. This trend needs to be reversed.
President Donald Trump thinks making in vitro fertilization more accessible could help achieve this goal, and his recent executive order calls for government agencies to increase affordability and accessibility to IVF.
While his order is based on a good intention, the policy is counterproductive. IVF births account for a small percentage of total births in the U.S. every year, around 2%. Even doubling this would not dent the declining birth rates. What it would do is prop up an industry that is woefully unregulated and perpetuates the very attitude toward children that underlies the West’s demographic crisis. In fact, encouraging people to use IVF might make the problem worse.
A child is a gift, given freely and received freely, with no strings attached. Too often, though, children are seen as a burden on the parents (and even on the planet) or as a commodity we have the right to acquire at the time of and in the form of our choosing. This is the precise attitude perpetuated by the IVF industry.
In Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth, social scientist Dr. Catherine Pakaluk said the key factor shared among women with five or more children was their view of children as having transcendent value and being their greatest blessing.
This unconditional attitude toward children is lacking in IVF, which involves the production of many children seen as having no value. In fact, less than 3% of the children conceived via IVF make it to a live birth. The vast majority either fail to develop in the laboratory, are discarded because they fail genetic screens, or are cryopreserved and left in a state of suspended animation.
IVF is the ultimate commodification of life — an expensive, wasteful process justified by the perceived “right” to have a child. If we believe we have a right to a child, then we believe we have the right to produce a child by any means, despite the risks inherent in the process to both child and mother.
And there are many risks. Children born via IVF are at higher risk of premature birth and congenital birth defects. After birth, studies have shown that these children have higher risks of childhood cancer and metabolic disorders. Women who undergo supraphysiological hormone treatments to trigger hyper-ovulation during the egg collection phase of the process also face immediate and long-term risks.
In addition to these risks, the process is inherently eugenic. More than 75% of IVF clinics perform sex selection on the embryos. The ratio of boys to girls born when IVF couples perform genetic screening is 115 boys for every 100 girls. Nearly all clinics will screen for Down syndrome and other chromosomal abnormalities. Many clinics also now overtly advertise screening for eye color.
Not to be outdone, third-party companies have moved in to provide polygenic testing to screen for genetic combinations associated with complex diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. While the validity of such polygenic tests is suspect, parents looking to shape the child of their dreams often have them performed and then destroy embryos that don’t fit the bill.
As a result, the IVF industry is becoming more like a car dealership in which the make and model of the child can be prescribed beforehand. The ultimate irony is that in this process, the end of which is to produce a child, the rights of the child are ignored. For every child born via IVF, countless other children are sacrificed. Even the child born is no longer brought into this world as the free-loving act of parents who will receive this gift in love, regardless of the child’s characteristics. This is the true tragedy of IVF.
THE PRO-LIFE PARADOX OF TRUMP AND VANCE
Trump would do much better to advocate methods such as Natural Procreative Technology, which seeks to address the underlying fertility problems at play so that couples can achieve pregnancy without the need for IVF.
In addition, measures such as NaProTECHNOLOGY respect the manner in which children are meant to be brought into the world — as unconditional gifts, loved and accepted, regardless of their specific traits. They are respected from the moment of conception. Until this attitude again becomes predominant in our culture, the declining birth rates will not be reversed, regardless of how much IVF costs are reduced.
Daniel Kuebler, Ph.D., a professor of biology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, is the host of the Purposeful Lab podcast and co-director of the Franciscan Institute of Science and Health.