On the front page of today's paper (Sun, 6 Sep - Father's Day [which adds extra sadness]) is the headline:
'Quite amazing': One in 10 babies born to women over 35 now conceived via IVF

IVF seems to be quite acceptable these days, even among Christians. How many of them understands what actually goes on. The low-light of Sunday church in 2018 was a visiting speaker spending most of his speaking time telling us how his wife recently had a child via IVF. I wanted to scream out a question (see below) based on the following statistics. (and hey, the math won't be 100% accurate, and I'm doing cross-country OZ/USA calculations, but they should be accurate enough for you to get the drift.)

There are two figures in the linked article I'm working with, "One in 20 babies are now conceived with IVF" and "27 per cent of embryo transfers result in a live birth", and I'm applying them to USA numbers.

Looking up some figures, the number of live births in the USA in 2016 was 3,945,875 (Births: Final Data for 2016 - PubMed). Now if the figures are similar and 1 in 20 are conceived with IVF then that results in 197,000 live births. However with only 27% of embryo transfers resulting in live births that means that 591,000 embryos (babies) died. That is not that much lower than the number of abortions in USA in 2016 which was 623,471 (Abortion statistics in the United States - Wikipedia).

But that's the bit they currently admit and consider that they can admit it and no one bats an eye. The IVF industry can say that 3 out of 4 pregnancies that they initiate end in the death of the child and no one says anything.

Here's some more stuff from a web site where woman going through IVF discuss their experiences. These are from the one woman:

First cycle we got 28 eggs, I think 18 fertilized with ICSI, 15 day 3 and 7 for testing on day 5/6, 1 chromosomally normal.
Second cycle 38 eggs retrieved, 19 fertilized, 19 growing still day 3 and 7 for testing day 5/6, 3 chromosomally normal.
Third cycle 26 eggs retrieved, 20 fertilized with ICSI, 19 growing still day 3 and 7 for testing on day 5/6, 5 chromosomally normal!!

So 18+19+20=57 of the woman's eggs were fertilised. Some technician then rates the quality of the resulting embryo (person) and only the best are transferred to the womb (if required). In her case only 9 (or 1 in 6) were considered "good". There was no info about an actually birth when I looked at the site in 2018.

Another woman's experience is:

34- retrieved 28- fertilized with icsi
All 28 looked good on day 3
Only six made it to day 5
Transferred two and have twin girls

So 1 in 5 were considered "good". Two were transferred, but what happened to the other four "excess embryos"? I'll let you guess.

But what if this 1 in 5 number is normal? 197,000 live births from 197,000+591,000 or about 788,000 transfers resulting from 3,940,000 fertilizations. That's the total number of live births. Puts the abortion industry to shame doesn't it?

link for above info: Survival rate from egg retrieval to blastocyst - BabyCenter

The question I wanted to aske the pastor was: "How many dead siblings does your daughter have, and how many of your own children were you prepared to let die to satisfy your "want" for a child?"


link for newspaper article: '''Quite amazing''': One in 10 babies born to women over 35 now conceived via IVF