If I’m reading this correctly (and apologies if I’ve missed you explaining your situation in other posts), you produced five embryos, and then carried one to term?
That sounds like a confirmation, not a rebuttal, of DianaG’s note there.
That is correct. I didn’t kill any of them. They failed to grow and died, but I didn’t kill them. If “discard” was intended to include “discard after they are dead,” then I suppose I did that, but I don’t see that that was what she was getting at.
I would sign onto the statement that people starting IVF do so in the knowledge that some will die, but not that “the process will almost certainly result in more embryos than are used,” (Lynn) or that “you will kill or discard more embryos than you will carry” (Diane). I don’t see that as being any different than continuing to attempt to have a baby when you have a history of multiple miscarriages, for example. You know that there is a decent probability that the embryos will die, but you’re not killing them.
I know that some people who are blessed with lots of eggs and who have qualms about discarding embryos will not attempt to fertilize all eggs extracted, in order to avoid having to discard any living embryos.
Yes, you’re HOPING to get at least one. But you’ll fertilize half a dozen or more, to get that one. And you’ll freeze viable ones for later use. You still might end up with a dozen or more embryos, and most potential parents know this before they start.
You might, but more often that not, you’re expecting/hoping to get one or two up to the point where you can transfer them at day three. You’re hoping you have enough eggs developing that they don’t cancel the whole damn cycle. They you’re hoping that they fertilize, and often they don’t. Then you’re hoping that they make it to day 3, or day 5. Plenty of women have their transfers cancelled because they all die.
Practically, the only women who are seriously risking ending up with a dozen frozen embryos are young women whose partners are the ones with the fertility problem, or egg donors. And most REs that I’ve seen discuss the issue think the idea of transferring lots of embryos with the intention of doing selective reduction is monstrous. Yes, they recommend selective reduction if you’re carrying a high-order pregnancy, but they try not to let you get into that situation in the first place. The trend is actually toward single-embryo transfers.
I think a lot of that is improvements in technique and technology.
AIUI, they’re much better these days at doing the transfers and getting them to implant, so they’re not doing the “transfer a lot & remove the extras” as much as they used to.
And that will partly depend on what clinic you go to and their preferred methods.
IOW, it’s not so much that Lynn and Diane are wrong, as that their information may be getting outdated.
Although they may have been incorrect in saying that eggs and 5 day old blastocysts get thrown out, I suspect the final result is the same. The reason why is that I bet that the success rate of a fertilized egg implanting and continuing development when it was fertilized in the fallopian tube is greater than in vitro fertilization. So, in essence, you are setting up for the death of zygotes and early embryos. If anti-abortion people think those are people, then you are creating people in a situation where they will be more likely to die. Absurd notion but, nevertheless, consistent in their world.
For the anti-abortion people, how about we call them pro-unborn? Just don’t call them pro-life because that term does not represent the majority of people in that movement.
So, you ask, what is the difference between an embryo and a person?
Embryos are smaller than people. So what? People come in all shapes and sizes and all have the same rights.
Embryos are less developed. Five year olds are less developed than 16 year olds. Does that mean the 16 year old has more rights than the 4 year old. Newborns don’t develop self-aware until several months after birth. Therefore since newborns are not self-aware pro-choicers must also believe that killing them is ok.
Now I’m just waiting for the pro-choicers to start with their ad hominem fallacies.
I would prefer if the pro-choicers would explain to me why fetuses shoudl not be considered members of the human community.
I don’t care if they’re members of the human community or not. It’s irrelevant.
A surprising number, in point of fact. I can see why that would be embarassing.
A lobbying group can call itself anything it wants. I have no obligation to refer to its objectives using a loaded term which I feel does not accurately describe them.
Fail.
Try again, please. When come back, bring relevant arguments.
What’s the matter? You can’t refute my arguments?
Prove to me that a fetus is not a person.
I think you’re taking the ALL a tad to literally.
Well, for starters, a person is an independent being, one not dependent on another being for basics like blood and oxygen…
I don’t believe that it’s relevant. No human has the right, in my opinion, to demand the flesh and blood of another human, even if that’s the only thing that can save their life. Additionally, I don’t believe that by having sex you are obligated to a duty of care to the resulting fetus, since pregnancy is a sufficiently low-probability outcome of any given sexual act that it doesn’t even rise, IMHO, to the standard of negligence to believe getting pregnant won’t happen.
Effectively, I liken abortion to an eviction. It is not the mother’s fault that a fetus is not capable of surviving outside the womb–the only thing that matters in the moral calculus is the mother’s absolute right to say “no, you may not use my body for your purposes”.
This is why the hypothetical uterine replicator is one of the few things that would cause me to rethink my position vis-a-vis abortion: it solves the problem of the balance of rights in the exact same way, but without killing the fetus.
My kidneys are failing. I will die without them. You have two functioning kidneys and match my blood type. Should I be legally allowed to demand one of your kidneys?
A person is not dependent upon another person to simply maintain life.
A person has (as a necessary part of their being) some degree of autonomy to remain living (greater or lesser depending upon their physical status).
An embryo does not fulfill these criteria in my not-so-humble opinion.
Nobody has to prove anything to you because nobody is trying to deny you your right to believe what you believe. It’s the people who want to change the law to fit their personal belief system, and try and force others to abide by beliefs they do not hold, that are required to provide some evidence and arguments to support it.
So once you go on life support for oxygen and dialysis, you’re not a person?
There’s not going to be a definition that doesn’t discriminate incorrectly sometimes.
Somewhere between conception and birth it becomes a person. Both sides of the argument cling to those cutoffs because they’re essential to the respective positions.
Alien, life support and dialysis are not beings. I chose my words carefully.