Fr. David Nix: IVF Kills Thirty Children For Every One That Survives

By Father David Nix, Padre Peregrino Hermitage Blog, February 25th, 2024

In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) is defined by Yale Medicine as “a procedure that involves retrieving a woman’s eggs and a man’s sperm sample and combining the two in a laboratory dish.”  Most Catholics in the pro-life movement are against IVF because “IVF replaces the marital act with a laboratory act and that an affront to the dignity of a child who is conceived.”

While that is true, the main reason we should be against IVF is not a violation of the 6th Commandment, but rather a violation of the 5th Commandment:  IVF eradicates many embryos (new individuals) to yield only a few living children.  A Catholic woman named Jenny Vaughn has a blog called Catholic Sistas in which she courageously shared her conversion story following the IVF procedures done by her and her husband.  She wrote:

The doctor had retrieved 38 good eggs, of which 31 are fertilized. Over the next week, 16 of our embryonic children die and are discarded. Thirteen are cryogenically frozen, mostly two to a vial. Two fresh embryos are transferred to my uterus… In desperation, we graduated to the expensive and complex process of IVF, where my eggs and my husband’s sperm would be taken out of our bodies, joined in a petri dish, and the resulting embryos would be inserted into my uterus.  Even before we started down the IVF road, there was a voice inside of us whispering that it was wrong… After the first transfer in July 2008, we were thrilled to discover we were pregnant with twins, due the next April. But at 21 weeks gestation, our twins–Madi and Isaiah–were born prematurely and only lived for one hour each. During those brief, heartbreaking few hours, we held them, bathed them, dressed them, and baptized them, holding onto their tiny, fragile bodies as long as we could. For the next year, I floated numbly through life. I believed the twins’ death was God punishing me for my past sins. My husband remained silent. Through it all, my heart was torn about the route we’d taken, as well as the fact that we still had 13 frozen children whose lives were on hold… [Later] the contract also stated that, “It is rare for an embryo to not survive thawing.” Half of our babies didn’t survive thawing. And, “Occasionally, an embryo is not found in the vial due to the nature of embryos to stick to the vial or pipette.” What incredible dangers we’d exposed our children to! Only one phrase in the entire contract spoke to the humanity of our children by calling them babies… Of 31 embryos created in a lab, only one survived to be raised by us. …