We’ve been discussing for the past week a variety of ethical questions related to Nadya Suleman’s octuplets. Should a woman who can barely handle six, get another eight? Should the clinic have agreed? What rights did the father/sperm-donor have?
What’s been surprisingly missing from the debate is a strong pro-life voice against the entire fertility industry. For those who believe legal rights should begin at “viability” or birth this is a non-issue but for those who believe life begins at conception, the fertility industry is a massive creator and discarder of lives — 127,977 in a typical year. In England, almost half the embryos created were destroyed.
I don’t understand why the pro-life community hasn’t made the abolition of the fertility industry a top goal.
Yet during this past week I got many emails from religious conservatives about the anti-religion nature of the stimulus package and some about the “pro-porn” Justice department official, but not a one about the octuplets case.
I found one pro-life blog that criticized the situation — but largely, she argued, because it pointed up the dangers of “reproductive rights.”
I suspect that part of why pro-lifers haven’t come down harder is that they admire her decision not to reduce the number of babies through selective abortion.
I still have never heard a good explanation from the pro-life community for why they aren’t campaigning to abolish the in vitro industry.