Week in Review
The Alabama IVF Case Didn’t Go Far Enough: The Truth about IVF and Why It’s Immoral
Last week, the Alabama State Supreme Court ruled that embryos used in IVF treatments are in fact children and are protected by state laws that allow parents to recover punitive damages in the event of a wrongful death.
The general reception of this ruling was that “pro-lifers have taken it too far,” with even former president Donald Trump saying, “Under my leadership, the Republican party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families. We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder! That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America.”
In response to this, ALL president Judie Brown stated, “Donald Trump’s position on in vitro fertilization shows his lack of understanding of the humanity of the embryonic person. American Life League would be happy to provide him a tutorial on the value of all human life.”
Judie spoke with the Wall Street Journal on the ruling. The WSJ asked Judie whether she and ALL agreed with the general position that this case has gone a step too far. ALL’s position was they haven’t taken it far enough.
Judie said, “There should be no IVF. There never should have been. It’s imposing science where the procreative gift should be from God.”
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses’ ‘right to become a father and a mother only through each other.’”
IVF is immoral for a few reasons and is by the Church considered an evil and an offense to God. However, the general public doesn’t see this. From a far-away view, similar to that of Trump’s, people look at IVF and ask, “It’s making more babies, how is that wrong?”
But a close-range picture of IVF reveals the truth behind the procedure.
Aside from the fact that an IVF procedure is a betrayal of spouses’ vows to one another, IVF procedures result in the termination of several preborn lives.
“A doctor will determine which of these embryos have the greatest potential to grow further if implanted, so he will choose those,” explains ALL’s Susan Ciancio in an article on IVF. “That leaves the remaining ones to be either frozen or discarded. After a few potential embryos have been selected, the parents can choose how many will be implanted in the mother’s uterus. If, for example, five babies were deemed to have the best potential, the mother might choose to have three implanted and save the other two for a future time. If the parents so desire, these remaining embryos will then be frozen.”
“But they have other options as well,” continues Ciancio. “Including donating them to another infertile couple (CCC 2376), donating them to science for research, and disposing of them. All of these instances are highly immoral. For instance, any of those ‘extras’—having been fertilized—are human beings. Generally multiple embryos are implanted because not all of them (or any) may ‘take.’ And then . . . the doctor suggests ‘extras’ be eliminated for the good growth of one or two. Any ‘disposal’ of embryos is an early abortion.”
For these reasons, we cannot support or embrace IVF. But there is hope for couples who struggle with infertility.
Ciancio explains, “The Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction is dedicated to helping infertile couples by using natural fertility regulation. According to its website, its natural techniques “provide effective, morally acceptable, and sexually healthy options for women and couples” so that they can achieve a successful pregnancy. It has had tremendous success with its patients over its 34-year history.”
We absolutely agree there should be more babies and that it should be easy for families to have their babies. However, the miracle of creation is a gift given to us by God alone, not one that belongs in a lab, and certainly not one that requires the death of many little lives.
Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio’s Latest Annual Report
The following article is from the latest issue of the Wednesday STOPP Report:
Last week, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio released its 2022-2023 annual report entitled Providing Care in a Dangerous State. In the report, Planned Parenthood claims it faced many “challenges” due to the Dobbs decision in 2022. These “challenges” for Planned Parenthood and other abortionists in the state really mean that they were restricted to killing children up until six weeks’ gestation. However, Ohio’s enactment of the deadly “Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety” (“Issue 1”) amendment in November 2023 allowed Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio to also report its “victories” to close out the year.
Despite the time restrictions on abortion in the state for most of the year, Planned Parenthood proudly divided its report into four sections of “victory.” The first of these claimed “victories” indicates that despite fewer abortions to perform, it still operated and made plenty of money. Following STI and pregnancy tests reported, the third highest service Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio provided was contraception to 11,803 contraceptive patients. PPGO states that because abortions were restricted in the state, it saw a “40% increase in requests for long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs), like intrauterine devices (IUDs).” PPGO also boasted of its expansion of “gender-affirming care” within its facilities and through telehealth throughout the state:
As part of our commitment to helping our transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming patients become their most authentic and complete selves, we continued expanding our gender-affirming care by launching these services at our Toledo Health Center in May. We also began offering follow-up gender-affirming hormone therapy visits through telehealth to give our patients back more of their time and remove barriers like taking time off work, navigating transportation, and coordinating childcare. To continue increasing access to this lifesaving care, we laid the groundwork to launch gender-affirming care at all 15 of our health centers by the end of 2023.
PPGO listed its next “victory” as getting Issue 1 passed—a law that allows preborn children to be murdered for any reason in Ohio. As STOPP reported in November 2023, Planned Parenthood and other abortion organizations had plenty of financial resources to campaign and market this law as something more than abortion. Not surprisingly, this fact was not included in PPGO’s report. To give one an idea, PPGO spent $26,305,373 on programs and outreach alone.
The next “victory” PPGO claims is also perhaps the most disturbing. It established a navigation program for its “abortion patient navigators” to assist women in leaving Ohio to get an abortion elsewhere. PPGO even began a “Patient Support Fund” that contributed $477,919 in the last year to provide women with “childcare, transportation, lodging, food, and more” while they got an abortion. Pages six and seven of the report show an illustrated depiction with a disturbing scenario of a mom deciding she wasn’t ready for another child, and how PPGO’s navigation program “helped” her get an abortion.
At the end of the report, PPGO proclaims its last success of the year as continuing to implement its perverted sex education in Ohio’s education system, which included reaching “2,967 elementary – high school student participants” in their education programs.
STOPP can summarize Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio’s annual report in the following sentence: For every one of PPGO’s “victories,” it is contributing to the destruction of human lives, whether that’s through abortion, sterilization, gender hormone therapy, or perverting our children with its “education.”
While STOPP waits for Planned Parenthood to release its annual report, we will continue our efforts to inform you about what is going on with this organization as we work together in our fight to stop Planned Parenthood once and for all.
ALL in the News
Judie Brown’s open letter to the NAACP on its support for abortion has garnered national attention. The story has appeared on outlets such as Faith on Trial Radio, LifeNews, The Daily Signal, and Church Militant. Last week, Katie Brown, ALL’s director of communications, was a guest on One America News Network’s evening program Tipping Point. Katie discussed the NAACP letter and Planned Parenthood’s open racism. A link to the full interview can be found here.
Judie Brown was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal on the Alabama IVF ruling. The article is linked here.
Susan Ciancio, editor of Celebrate Life Magazine and director of the Culture of Life Studies Program, writes a weekly commentary on timely pro-life topics. This week, she wrote about St. Joseph and how we can use his example to build a culture of life. It was published by the Catholic World Report.
Twice a week, Judie’s commentaries are distributed to an expansive media list. The list contains over 100 media outlets such as Fox News, The Federalist, Breitbart, and The Daily Caller, among others. Judie’s commentaries are each featured on the front page of ALL.org.
Pro-Life Education
Culture of Life Studies Program
St. Joseph: Pro-Life Saint, Hero, and Role Model: March is the Month of St. Joseph. Teach your elementary-aged children about the beauty of fatherhood through the example of St. Joseph as he cared for Jesus and Mary. In this lesson, students will learn about why we honor St. Joseph, the foster-father of our Lord Jesus, as the guardian of the Church. They will also learn the important role that fathers play in our lives and why we should turn to St. Joseph for his intercession. ORDER HERE
ALL’s Education Materials
Contraception and Abortion: The Deadly Connection is an easy-to-comprehend brochure that explains how contraception kills tiny preborn babies. We live in a world where most people are ignorant of what really happens when a woman ingests these pills. Understanding this connection will save lives and families. SHOP NOW
Pro-Life Social Media
Many Charities Aren’t Worthy of Charitable Giving. Here’s One.
If you haven’t perused our new Charity Watchlist recently, be sure to stop over and familiarize yourself. We regularly post new profiles of nonprofits. ALL’s staff investigates a charity’s policy, mission, and programs to find out if any facet of the organization is promoting ideas contrary to the dignity of human life.
To give you an idea of what the Charity Watchlist is about, here’s one national nonprofit you’ve heard of but probably didn’t know adopts policies destructive to vulnerable, human life.
