As with fears over the expansion of artificial intelligence, human choice holds a primary role in tensions surrounding the regulation of in vitro fertilization. A certain pessimism motivates both.
Earlier this month, Texas state Rep. Daniel Alders introduced legislation to advance reporting requirements on IVF. Reports from the provider would cover a range of technicalities related to what happens to the embryos created, including the total number, how many perish, whether their destruction is intentional or negligent, and what motivated the embryos’ fates.
The bill is among the first in the country to propose IVF restrictions on the basis of research and informed consent. On these grounds, it might have a shot at making it through to passage, unlike previous cases that have outright opposed IVF on the basis of protecting human life from conception. This fatal truth is what motivated the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that embryos be legally recognized as children, and what started up a reaction of frantic IVF protection among a majority of Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
And yet, advocates for the procedure oppose such regulation of the IVF industry, themselves on the basis of needless government intervention “limiting patients’ choices regarding their medical care.” Democrats even blocked Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) IVF Protection Act because it left “too many legal loopholes” for states to be able to restrict IVF. Reporting requirements, whether explicit or implicit, are seen as a gradual effort to limit the number of embryos that can be created. Of course, they serve this purpose: It is quite a hard line to take in insisting that there is nothing to the natural discomfort most people feel at the idea of plainly discarding frozen embryos.
In addition to plain callousness, we should be able to see that opposition to IVF regulation is rooted also in its success as an industry. Attentive regulation would expose the “Wild West” IVF arena that leaves ample room for devastating embryo mix-ups. The standard procedure has an already low live birth rate, thus the numerous “excess” embryos each round creates in advance. With even fewer chances, IVF just will not work — less than it already does. This dynamic between technological and human capital is part of what makes IVF so expensive.
The overall public goal of IVF proponents is to make it “drastically more affordable,” per President Donald Trump. Members of the industry, such as the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, have a duty to address “disparities in access” to the median $19,000 per cycle procedure. Currently, mostly the wealthy — older women, tech tycoons, gay couples — go forward with it. Tax incentives, white-knuckled bills, and protests are the chief solutions the front lines are chasing.
Blanket accessibility framed as charity is a common trope. The working idea in IVF affordability arguments is that poor people should have the same offers of the same types of happiness as rich people. Common means do not suffice, but they are all the poor have. Change that circumstance, and make it so abundant that IVF is the most economical option, and the project is achieved. Whereas, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Christine Rosen has questioned, “Who gets the AI teacher bot? Who gets the AI chat bot for therapy? People who can’t afford a human being.” We are “used to outsourcing everything,” she said. “Technology is meant to reach into every single aspect of how we communicate.”
As it is, the big question these days is how many jobs advanced AI will render obsolete. Jobs such as writing. The deep, human reason AI is a threat is that, at the point when most work could be replaced, it will require a serious choice of society. Most people doubt, perhaps they are positive, that the American population will not choose the human person. All this is despite the Left’s insistence that people’s unrestrained, unmoralized choices are equally determinant of the good.
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With increasing information on IVF, those undecided will be forced to form opinions on life itself. IVF is not exactly one of the “cool, new technologies” Rosen mentioned that are tested on poorer populations, but it is yet to be truly tested. Its prospects, however, are far more monstrous than the present and looming threats of internet dependence.
At some point, even pro-restriction IVF proponents will arrive at the realization that it is wrong to play God and create any embryos at all. Then, another, earlier choice will present itself. We can hope that things do not take the same route as abortion.