My Darling Embryos

A mother who underwent in vitro fertilization had her theology changed in the process

BY: Christine Adams

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They say getting old isn't for sissies. Neither is fertility treatment.

Going in, you know it will extract a huge cost financially, physically, and emotionally. What you can't know is that it will cause you to make moral and theological decisions that were never discussed in Sunday School, the consequences of which you will live with the rest of your life.

By the time you get to the in vitro part of the process, you've already discovered a number of things.

  • You've discovered that life isn't fair. Women who don't want children, desperately poor women who can't support them, women who are victims of rape or incest-even women for whom children will ruin their lives-get pregnant every day. And women who dearly want children can't.

  • You've discovered that, despite all those dire warnings in high school, sex doesn't necessarily equal a baby.

  • You've even discovered that sex with your husband in the sanctity of marriage at the right time of the month when you're pumped full of fertility drugs after months and years of earnest prayer, crying and pleading with God doesn't necessarily equal a baby.

    You're about to discover that embryos don't necessarily equal babies, either. In fact, nothing equals a baby except a baby.

    In vitro clinics are strange places. It's somewhere no one wants to be, yet it's hard to get in. The most successful clinics have waiting lists of a year or more; and for couple who have already waited years for a child, that seems interminable. They're also dreadfully expensive. An average in vitro cycle will cost you between $10,000 and $15,000. Sometimes some of the costs are covered by insurance. Many times they're not.

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    Christine Adams, an adjunct professor of English, lives in the Midwest.

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