re: #19 Gus

If you want to drop him a note… here’s his Facebook page…

[Link: www.facebook.com…]

LOL, what an ignorant douche bag.

“My wife and I went through in-vitro … and I have a photograph of my daughter when she was 8-cells old,” he added. “Someone would have to be very convincing to convince me life doesn’t begin at conception.”

Is this asshole under the impression that only one egg was fertilized for the procedure? In vitro fertilization involves the creation and implantation of multiple fetuses and frequently requires selective abortion to pare down the final number.

IVF (in vitro fertilisation) is a medical procedure used to help some infertile couples. A woman’s ovaries are stimulated to produce multiple eggs which are fertilised with her partner’s sperm. This produces several fertilised embryos, some of which are placed in her womb, and the others are frozen for possible later use.

Two ethical problems then arise:

because several embryos are implanted to increase the chance of a successful pregnancy, multiple births can occur. Some couples choose selective reduction instead - the destruction of some of the embryos early in the pregnancy - either because they don’t want so many children, or in order to improve the survival chances of the other embryos.
if the stored embryos are eventually removed from storage and disposed of, this could be regarded as abortion. Legislation such as the Texas Prenatal Protection Act makes such disposal an unlawful killing except under restricted circumstances.