Forget Knocked Up, IVF Will Get You Fired Too

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As a bit of a follow-on from the woman fired from a Christian school for getting pregnant out of marriage, I give you one from a Catholic school.

A married woman got fired for receiving in vitro fertilization, even though it's her eggs, and her husband's sperm. The Catholic church's stance is that the embryos are frozen, with the potential to not be used. Since you cannot donate the embryos to anyone else, any un-used embryos would be destroyed, and thus violates the Church's stance on life beginning at conception.

The thing is, she's been getting IVF treatments for two years, her school knew about it, and only fired her this year. (She didn't get pregnant on the first few tries at IVF.) Now, two year's in, the priest that heads the school says she is a "grave, immoral sinner", and fired her. She appealed her firing to the bishop, and while the bishop left out the sinner part, he agreed that it was in violation of Catholic doctrine. (But it wasn't two years ago?)

Anyway, she's suing the school. I don't know if she has any real shot at winning (just like I don't think the unmarried woman who got pregnant has any real chance), and I'm inclined to think this one is worse. She's not in nearly as bad of shape as the first woman, as her husband is employed, and presumably has health insurance. So it's not like they have no source of income (and currently, there's also no baby on the way either). But I think I have a bigger problem with it because she's being fired for the potential of not using all the embryos. I will concede that most women don't go through all of the embryos, and the women that do are typically the ones that fail to get pregnant.

Here's the news video of the story.

 

The issue isn't with her getting them implanted and them failing to develop - at least you gave it a try, and yes this happens all the time even with a umm... "conventionally" fertilized egg. (I read a study once that stated fewer than half of all fertilized eggs successfully implant and lead to a pregnancy. In most of these cases, the woman would not even know she was pregnant - unless she was part of the study.)

The issue is that if she DOES get pregnant, and still has embryos left afterwards. If she decides she doesn't want any more children before the supply of embryos are used, the remaining embryos are destroyed, and the Catholic church views this as tantamount to abortion.

 

Unless it was specifically mentioned in her contract that IVF treatment would get her fired, I'd say she has a much better chance of winning the case than the woman that got pregnant out of marriage.

 

Understood, but in the view of the Church, miscarriages or the failure of a fertilized egg to implant in the uterus are not willful acts, and thus are not seen as you killing a life. Having an abortion or destroying a fertilized egg are.

 

Rhetorically asked, but one that can be honestly answered. Basically the rule is you can't do anything to willfully prevent conception (which is why contraception is banned), nor can you do anything the terminate the life of a fertilized egg (which is why you would have to keep trying to get pregnant if you had fertilized eggs left, even if you didn't want any more kids).

So, while it wouldn't be the woman who personally destroyed the fertilized egg, it would be done with her consent, meaning she is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in the eyes of the church - thus, the "grave immoral sinner" part.

EDIT: dmc, you forgot about the Crusades.

 

What do you mean? The IVF clinic won't throw them away without your permission - the storage of the fertilized eggs are one of the services they offer. That said, they also charge a fee for storage, and once a woman decides she doesn't want to have any more children - or is beyond child-bearing age - there's nothing else that can be done to the eggs. So why would you continue to pay for their indefinite storage if you're the only person who they can be implanted into, and you cannot (or do not wish to) have any more children?

 

They can't be implanted into someone else because it's currently not legal to do so. (Although I see no reason why it wouldn't be medically possible to implant them into someone else.)

I can't cite article and code or anything, and the only reason I know anything about this at all is because my wife is friends with a woman who has twin 7-year old boys (fraternal obviously) through IVF. (When you go for the procedure, they implant two embryos, because the success rate isn't all that high, so you effectively double your odds if they put two in at once. In her case, she beat the odds and ended up having twins.)

Anyway, while it's legal to donate sperm, you can't donate an embryo, regardless of whether the sperm is from your husband or a donor. The woman has the final say - for reasons I feel are abundantly clear - but once your eggs are fertilized it is either for you or for no one. Like I said, I do not know the reasoning behind the law, and the only reason I know this at all is because this woman is 38 now, she doesn't want any more children, and she got rid of her remaining embryos.

 

I am sure a clumsy thawing and implanting of the remaining frozen embryos could produce the same outcome as a willfully destruction of the frozen embryos, through no fault of the woman.

But none of us can be right, because we're impinging on people's right to freedom of religious expression. That's as forbidden in USA as trying to tell someone they can't take their gun to the pub.

 

That may affect public perception, but doesn't matter all that much as far as legality goes. It depends on her contract, but I imagine that she has a chance. If for no other reason, because of the fact she's been having this procedure for two years - unless that's the first time the school heard about it (and that would be rather hard to prove), they would have been complicit by not doing anything about it.

Frankly, I find it absurd. It's one of those issues on which dogmatists go too far and lose sight of what their teaching should be about. Even if the church dogma finds the IVF distasteful, it is one of the (very few afaik) methods couples use to have a child. If it weren't for the procedure, the embryos they bemoan would be no more a child than a miscarried one.

 

According to the video in the OP, they did know about it. In fact, one of the other priests at the school told her that they were "praying for" her success.

Just to be clear - while I have been answering BTA's questions as best as I can, I am not defending the school's decision to fire this woman, and find it rather absurd that they did so.

However, I am in a somewhat unique position as being a person who is well acquainted with someone who has children through IVF, was raised Catholic, and has heard more than my fair share of crap like this throughout my lifetime. I also have a fanatical mother-in-law who goes on and on about all the Catholic rules - and it pisses me off when my son comes home from her house and tells me what he learned that day about Jesus. But the larger point being, I'm at least somewhat more informed about the topic than you average Joe, but certainly no expert on the subject.

---------- Added 18 hours, 24 minutes and 56 seconds later... ----------

We might get nono-mom as opposed to an octomom next month. There's a Mexican woman pregnant with 9 kids due to give birth next month. There's the dark side of IVF - and why the doctor who got the octomom pregnant with eight kids ended up getting his medical license revoked.

It's true that successfully implanting an embryo into a woman isn't the easiest thing in the world to do. Even with the latest technology improving the success rates, we're still only around 50%. That's why the standard practice when going for IVF treatment is that two embryos are implanted to double your chances that you get pregnant with one. But FFS, it's gross irresponsibility for a doctor to get to the point where you risk a women having a litter instead of a child. To use the octomom as an example, her doctor implanted 12 embryos into her. It doesn't state how many embryos this potential nonomom had implanted into her, although it's obvious it's at least nine as opposed to the typical two.

And no matter how badly a woman wants a child, there's no woman in the world that wants nine. Hell, most women don't want two at one time. Caring for one infant is work enough. Once you start getting into litters, there's no way that two parents can care for nine infants on their own.

 

Wait, would the "fertilized eggs are people" argument have any weight here? It doesn't sound too likely - although I can't imagine why a doctor would implant so many eggs in one operation. I mean... 3 or 4, perhaps, but a dozen? That's going a bit too far just to tip the odds.

 

Well, given that the "fertilized egg people" don't like IVF to begin with, I imagine they wouldn't like this either.

And I do agree it's going too far to tip the odds, which is why the guy that did that to the octomom doesn't have his medical license anymore.

 

Aren't Catholics encouraged to have lots of babies? This woman is TRYING to fulfill that directive, in the bounds of wedlock, and they are still giving her grief? There's a big difference between:

A: a fertilized egg that simply "goes bad" because another fertilized egg resulted in a pregnancy and birth of a child that will be loved and cared for by a married couple

and

B: an unmarried woman whose multiple abortions clearly indicate she's using the procedure as birth control.

 

Indirectly, yes. You aren't supposed to use any type of contraception, and so if you follow that directive, assuming you're having sex with your wife with any frequency, you'll have a lot of kids. (Although seeing as how the percentage of women using the pill who consider themselves Catholic is almost identical to the rest of the population, I'm uncertain that the initial directive is followed all that closely.)

You'd think so LKD. You'd think it would viewed as an implementation of science to help the couple have a child that they couldn't produce on their own. I mean it's the married couple's sperm and eggs that are being used to produce the embryos. It's the exact same combination of chromosomes their kids would get if they were able to produce a child naturally.

While I do not support the Church's stance on this, I can, to an extent, explain why they harbor this view. The most complicated part of the process isn't fertilizing and later implanting the embryos into the woman. It's getting the eggs from the ovaries in the first place. That's the most invasive part of the whole thing, and so naturally, you don't want to have to do that repeatedly. So when they get the eggs, they don't just take the two that they'd need for the first implantation procedure. They take 20 or so, to make sure they get multiple tries for a successful pregnancy.

The Church probably wouldn't have a problem with it (at least not as big) if they went it, got two eggs, fertilized them, implanted them, and then if that didn't work, they went back in to get two more. But you can see why that process would only add to the expense of what is already a very costly medical procedure. (My brother and his wife considered IVF, as they can't produce a child on their own, and depending on the number of implantation attempts made, you're looking at somewhere between $80,000 and $100,000 in costs, that medical insurance plans generally don't cover.)

But that brings us to the part that the Church has the biggest problem with. They don't fertilize the eggs one or two at a time. They fertilize all of them all at once. (Again, I see this as an entirely practical means of doing it.) Then - and this is where the big problem comes in - they look to see which embryos appear to be the healthiest, and use them first (again, an entirely practical means of improving your chance at success with the fewest attempts). The Church sees this as nothing short of a eugenics program. Every single one of those embryos had a divine soul from the moment of conception, and all of these "people in potentia" should have the chance to become said people.

Now, as the initial intention of harvesting and fertilizing 20 eggs was to ensure that you'd have as many as you should ever need, in most cases the number of fertilized eggs exceed the amount that will ever be implanted. And so if you don't want any more kids, those remaining souls are being tossed into a dumpster. Let's say this couple got pregnant the first time they tried, and that both embryos successfully implanted. Not only did they get pregnant, they're having twins. And maybe after they have those twins, they say, "Two kids are enough, we're done." As far as the Church is concerned, they are morally obligated to try to follow through on the other 18.