ArcaMax

The number of human beings living in freezers in the United States now outnumbers the population of Dallas, Texas.

"Estimates place the number of frozen embryos at greater than 1.5 million," reported the March 2022 edition of Fertility and Sterility, a journal published by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

According to the latest Census Bureau estimate, Dallas had a population of 1,302,868 in 2023.

How did all these human beings -- conceived in the United States of America -- end up locked in freezers?

The ASRM has published a booklet explaining in vitro fertilization and why it results in human beings being frozen.

"IVF is a method of assisted reproduction in which a man's sperm and a woman's eggs are combined outside of the body in a laboratory dish," says the ASRM booklet.

"One or more fertilized eggs (embryos) may be transferred into the women's uterus, where they may implant in the uterine lining and develop," it says.

"Excess embryos may be cryopreserved (frozen) for future use."

These embryos created outside the womb for implantation in a mother -- or for freezing -- can undergo genetic testing before their fate is determined.

"Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a form of prenatal diagnosis that is performed on early embryos created by in vitro fertilization," explains an article published in 2014 by the Journal of Clinical Medicine.

This procedure can be used for eugenic purposes.

"It is solely a diagnostic procedure that can identify whether a specific embryo carries a single gene disorder for which the couple is at-risk or a chromosome abnormality that could lead to either failed implantation, subsequent miscarriage or the birth of a child with physical and/or developmental disability," the journal article says.

"This information is used by the couple and their physicians to make decisions on which embryo(s) should be transferred to the uterus and will with high likelihood result in a normal pregnancy," it says.

"The greater the number of embryos created, the greater the chance that genetically normal embryos can be identified," says the journal article. "The level of selection is that of choosing which embryos can be transferred in a fresh IVF cycle or cryopreserved for future use, versus those predicted to be affected with an abnormality."

The procedure can also be used to select the sex of the human being who is allowed to move forward in life rather than move to a freezer.

"PGD can be used to select the sex of an embryo, either to avoid a genetic disease in males caused by a mutation on the X chromosome (X-linked disease) or simply to satisfy the gender preference of the future parents," explains the article in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.

"When PGD for sex selection is done in the absence of medical indications, it is often referred to as 'non-medical sex selection' or 'social sexing,'" says the journal. "According to the survey, 42% of IVF clinics have provided PGD for non-medical sex selection."

The Daily Mail reported in 2012 that in Great Britain, as of that year, "[m]ore than 1.7 million embryos prepared with the aim of helping women become pregnant have been thrown away since records began 21 years ago."

It is not science fiction to assume that medical science will someday -- and, perhaps, in the not-too-distant future -- develop the technology to not only conceive a child in a laboratory dish but then gestate those who are deemed genetically desirable all the way to viability in an artificial womb. In a nation that ignores the natural law, the procreation of children could be completely divorced from the traditional family.

On Feb. 18, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to promote IVF. "[I]t is the policy of my Administration to ensure reliable access to IVF treatment, including by easing unnecessary statutory or regulatory burdens to make IVF treatment drastically more affordable," he said in this order.

"Within 90 days of the date of this order," he said, "the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy shall submit to the President a list of policy recommendations on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment."

This executive order said nothing about preventing IVF from being used for sex selection or eugenics. Nor did it say anything about preventing human embryos from being discarded or stored away in freezers.

The Declaration of Independence said that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." IVF, which does not treat human lives equally and does not respect every human being's right to life, violates this principle.

Trump's policy to promote IVF is wrong.

To find out more about Terence P. Jeffrey and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

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