{"id":619,"date":"2009-01-09T09:37:25","date_gmt":"2009-01-09T09:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/discarded-embryos.html"},"modified":"2009-01-09T09:37:25","modified_gmt":"2009-01-09T09:37:25","slug":"discarded-embryos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/discarded-embryos.html","title":{"rendered":"Discarded Embryos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Given the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/vatican-statement-on-in-vitro.html\">heated discussion we&#8217;ve been having about whether pro-life people (or people in general) should oppose in vitro fertilization<\/a>, I was intrigued by a note I got from a pro-life doctor\/activist in England.<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s his analysis of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hfea.gov.uk\/docs\/Latest_long_term_data_analysis_report_front_cover.pdf\">the data put out by England&#8217;s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority<\/a>, a government agency, about what happened to embryos created during this process in 2005:<br \/>\n214,177 embryos were &#8216;used&#8217; (i.e. successfully created).<br \/>\n68,083 of those were transferred to women:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;What happened to the other two thirds?  The HFEA states that 43,892 were frozen and stored, 230 were donated to other women, 4,338 were donated for research, but 97,634 were euphemistically &#8216;discarded&#8217;.<br \/>\nSo there we have it.  Transferred, 31.8%; frozen, 20.5%, donated, 0.1%; for research, 2.0% and discarded, 45.6%.  The latter two categories were destined for immediate and deliberate destruction &#8211; a total of 101,972 human embryos, or almost half of those created by IVF, destroyed in just one year.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Again, those who don&#8217;t  believe that life begins at conception will not be bothered by this. But those who do, why do you not consider this a holocaust as well?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Given the heated discussion we&#8217;ve been having about whether pro-life people (or people in general) should oppose in vitro fertilization, I was intrigued by a note I got from a pro-life doctor\/activist in England. Here&#8217;s his analysis of the data put out by England&#8217;s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, a government agency, about what happened&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Discarded Embryos - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/discarded-embryos.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Discarded Embryos - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Given the heated discussion we&#8217;ve been having about whether pro-life people (or people in general) should oppose in vitro fertilization, I was intrigued by a note I got from a pro-life doctor\/activist in England. Here&#8217;s his analysis of the data put out by England&#8217;s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, a government agency, about what happened&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/discarded-embryos.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-09T09:37:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Discarded Embryos - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/discarded-embryos.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Discarded Embryos - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Given the heated discussion we&#8217;ve been having about whether pro-life people (or people in general) should oppose in vitro fertilization, I was intrigued by a note I got from a pro-life doctor\/activist in England. Here&#8217;s his analysis of the data put out by England&#8217;s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, a government agency, about what happened&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/discarded-embryos.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2009-01-09T09:37:25+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/discarded-embryos.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/discarded-embryos.html","name":"Discarded Embryos - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-01-09T09:37:25+00:00","dateModified":"2009-01-09T09:37:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/discarded-embryos.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/discarded-embryos.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/discarded-embryos.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Discarded Embryos"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}