The Ethics of Infertility Treatments

Mar 03, 2009

My husband, Dave asked if he could write a post concerning the ethics of infertility treatments. I thought it would be a great idea to hear it from a male’s perspective. I think he did an excellent job in explaining how God brought him to the decision to proceed to with IVF.

Also, please be sure to read the special prayer request below.

Written by Dave, my wonderfully understanding and supportive husband:

How I discovered infertility
The first time I ever heard infertility mentioned was when I was in high school. A couple at my church had been trying to conceive and had been unsuccessful. They were told that the only way they would be able to conceive would be by going through In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Despite the wife’s father offering to pay for the procedure, the couple decided they would rather put their faith in God alone. Amazingly, God was faithful to them! The last time I saw them they had 2 children with a 3rd on the way. Although I didn’t really know much about infertility, seeing that miracle happen before my eyes really shaped my early thinking on the subject.

Of course, the first thoughts I had as Elaine and I struggled to conceive were that we needed to just put our faith in God and trust Him to give us a child, and that was definitely a good place to start. I wasn’t completely closed to the idea of some kind of treatment if we needed it, but my main concern was keeping our focus as a couple on God. Fortunately, I can say that our stance on that has never changed.

Diagnoses and treatments
As Elaine and I went to the doctor and found out more about ourselves from a fertility standpoint, we began to realize that our problems conceiving stemmed from more than just some hormone imbalance. When Elaine was diagnosed with polycystic ovaries, I was told my sperm were a little below average, and the RE recommended intra-uterine insemination (IUI). This was really the first time I had to decide for myself whether I thought the treatments were right for us or not.

I ended up being fine with IUI more quickly than I would have thought. The first positive I thought of for IUI was that only God can form a child from a sperm and an egg. IUI essentially just helps put the two together. It’s not trying to play “God” in my mind to do that, especially in the sense that the procedure was more in the realm of corrective medicine. Like stitching up a cut helps to correct the alignment of skin tissue and ward off infection, IUI helps a higher percentage of sperm reach the egg.

After four failed cycles of IUI (1 of which was a cancelled cycle), the next step was to do some exploratory surgery and look specifically for endometriosis. I had no problem with this even from the start for the same reasons I had come to grips with IUI. When the doctor found and removed endometriosis I was glad, knowing we had made the right decision to do the surgery, but after learning more about the effects of endometriosis and learning that IVF would probably be our best option going forward, I had three main issues to work out.

I don’t want quintuplets!
The initial problem I had with IVF was all those TV shows you see where someone had 5 kids through the procedure. This concern was quickly dispelled when I found out that they would only put 2 eggs in Elaine at a time. Those irresponsible doctors that put a lot of eggs in at once give the other REs out there a bad name. If the IVF cycle is done right (i.e.. the appropriate number of eggs transferred depending on the age of the patient), scenarios like the woman who recently had 8 children from a single cycle just don’t happen, and since our doctor is so conservative, we are confident that he will protect us from that type of thing.

What about the extra eggs?
The next problem I came across when thinking about going into IVF was what would happen to the extra eggs if we ended up having any. Knowing that Elaine might produce upwards of 20 eggs for one retrieval, and that they would only put in 2 at a time, I was starting to do the math and get a little scared.

Then I remembered that not all of the eggs the doctors retrieve will successfully become fertilized. Those eggs don’t bother me because if they won’t fertilize surrounded by my sperm in a lab, I doubt they would do any better trying to swim through Elaine’s tubes. Besides, every month that Elaine isn’t pregnant another egg dies. It’s not a baby yet.

Also, as I learned about the process of IVF, I learned that just as many “naturally” fertilized eggs don’t implant or miscarry, many lab-fertilized ones die in the process as well. And because Elaine has had endometriosis, its adverse affect on egg quality will make having extra eggs after one cycle a miracle in and of itself (although, we would welcome that because we’d like to have 3 or 4 children).

It’s just not natural!
The biggest conflict I had with IVF was the fact that it just seems to go against nature. I felt that man is not supposed to go messing around trying to create life in such an unnatural way. I could rationalize IUI since everything was still happening inside of Elaine’s body, but to take everything out and put it in some science lab seemed crazy to me.

However, once the initial shock of that wore off, I began to realize a few things. We do things every day that are not natural. From simple things like shoes to more complicated things like building automobiles, open heart surgery, and even the keyboard I am using to type, we people do things that go against nature every day. Nobody says to the auto mechanic, “How dare you mess with God’s Creation and put those parts together that way to make people go really fast! That’s just playing God!” Likewise, nobody criticizes the doctor who performs a bypass on a man’s heart.

So how could I wake up to an alarm clock every morning, drive to work in my car, sit at a computer for 8 hours creating programs for others to use and be against taking advantage of the problems solved by reproductive medicine? I concluded that while God’s Creation is exactly as he intended it, we are part of it. He gave us brains to be able to solve problems that arise from every day life. Problems like travel, heart-attacks, and information dispersal have all been helped along by man-made inventions, and those advancements are still glory to God because he gave us those wonderful brains!

So, I decided that the area of fertility is no different. If one person can have surgery to correct a faulty valve in his heart, another can undergo a medical procedure to correct or help along a faulty reproductive system.

We’re ok with IVF.
This is for the people who were like me before going through this with Elaine. The decision to go through with IVF was definitely not one that we went about flippantly. I know if I were on the outside looking in I would have some misgivings about the morality of the whole “test-tube baby” thing. Honestly, it all comes down to having walked in the shoes we have walked in for the past year and a half. While a year and a half ago I thought much differently about IVF, I’ve learned that when it comes to complex decisions such as our decision to go through with IVF, it’s best to withhold judgment about what is right and wrong until I’ve walked a mile or two down the path. ***** Now it’s me again… I want to request prayer for a blogger friend of mine. Erin went through her first IVF cycle last month and on February 25th she found out she is pregnant! Her first beta was 86 and her second beta (yesterday) was 137. Those of you who have gone through this before know everyone looks for doubling numbers and these numbers did not double over a 3 day period. PLEASE PRAY for Erin and her baby(ies). Please pray for God’s peace upon her heart at this time. Pray that her numbers continue to rise and she does not loose the pregnancy. For those of you that don’t know what “betas” are all about… When it would be time to take a home pregnancy test, women who have undergone an infertility treatment go have blood work done to measure the pregnancy hormone hCG in their blood. Typically, if a woman is pregnant and the pregnancy is viable, the beta level doubles every 48 hours or so. Just pray for Erin, please.

- Elaine