Embryos are not babies

MARIA OF CROOKED TIMBER: THINGS SHE HAS LEARNED FROM IVF

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I’m going to share some observations as I near the end of my third round of IVF.

Embryos are not babies: You might think someone so eager to have children as to undergo months of difficult and expensive treatment would have a hard-core view on embryos and babies. You’d be right. Twice now, I’ve had two embryos placed in my uterus. I have pictures of the precise moment they were ‘put back’. None of them stuck. The fact is, most don’t. Despite what we went through to create these embryos, I am left with the cold conviction that they were opening gambits, and no more. Certainly, I would have loved them if they’d turned into babies and mourned them if I’d lost them farther along, and I was very, very sad to not get pregnant. But I felt as if the embryos were simply sets of ultimately flawed operating instructions that de-compiled within hours or days. Most embryos are only that. They may succeed, or they may not. They may be carried to term, or they may not. Human agency may intervene in any of these moments, or it may not. This makes me a bad Catholic, but I find it strangely comforting nonetheless. I believe more firmly now that an embryo is a step along the way to becoming a human, but it’s not a human. It’s a possibility….

Trans-vaginal ultrasounds are really quite invasive: This is a live issue in the US, where legislators are trying to force women who want abortions to undergo ‘just an ultrasound’ to see their babies…. Religious conservatives can’t seem to conceive that a woman can understand her pregnancy is real and still choose to end it…. I have them two or three times a week. It was a big deal for me when I started as it’s basically a dildo with a camera in it, wrapped in a condom, smeared with very cold lubricant, pushing quite hard against the cervix…. I want to have these scans. They are getting me somewhere I want to be, and they are administered by professionals I know and trust…. I believe this invasive scan being forced on pregnant women seeking an abortion would be a violation of their bodies….

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more insightful, intelligent logic Here:
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/18/things-i-have-learnt-from-and-about-ivf/