Pro-Life World View | February 28, 2025

Woman sues IVF clinic after receiving the wrong embryo – the child wasn’t biologically hers

Stories about in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments are highly topical right now. Here is a heartbreaking story of a woman who sought to conceive using a sperm donor but discovered after giving birth that an embryo not biologically hers had been transferred into her womb. The lawyer representing the biological parents commented, “This is the cardinal sin for fertility clinics … it should never happen.”  This tragic story highlights some of the practical and moral concerns with IVF.

ANALYSIS: USAID targeted foreign governments and Americans at home

Apparently, most Americans had been unaware of the scale of foreign aid being given by the U.S., who the recipients of the funds were, and the purposes to which it was being applied via the US Foreign Aid Agency (USAID).   An analysis by the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) paints a disturbing picture.

USAID has been a vehicle for leveraging targeted foreign regimes deemed unfavourable to US interests, and therefore essentially political in nature.  The linked article suggests that the USAID political strategy has been to “cobble together coalitions of racial, regional, gender and LGBT minorities to destabilise” selected governments.

C-Fam outline US internal propaganda too, helping to explain why there were such low levels of awareness of what large sums of foreign aid were really being used for.

The proper pro-life and Catholic response to life-limiting prenatal diagnoses

A recent article in the US-based National Catholic Bioethics Center publication “Ethics and Medics” discusses the appropriate Catholic and pro-life response of care for babies born with what is often described as “lethal” or “fatal” anomalies. Prenatal diagnosis of trisomy 21 (Down syndrome), trisomy 13 and trisomy 18 (both these chromosomal abnormalities are considered lethal by the medical community, yet survival can be weeks, months, years, or even decades), and other anomalies are widespread. Medical personnel have a duty to ensure appropriate assessments are undertaken at birth and to not rely on a preconceived assumption based on a test that is often incorrect. A thorough evaluation after birth enables practitioners to create a care plan based on clear evidence and provide parents with the best information to give informed consent. Too often, children diagnosed with a “lethal” condition before birth are not assessed when born and they are given comfort care and potentially medications that may suppress respiration, hastening death.

“If physicians say a condition is lethal, it becomes lethal. When parents are counseled that prenatal diagnosis is fatal and offered no hope for supportive medical interventions, they are left to choose between abortion or perinatal hospice. With a livebirth followed only by hospice care, a quick death is inevitable,” writes McCaffrey, who is a professor of pediatrics.

McCaffrey challenges pro-life advocates and the Catholic community to move beyond offering perinatal hospice as a compassionate response to families whose child has been diagnosed with a life-limiting condition. Instead, he insists, we ought to focus “on being certain we honour the dignity of these infants, pursuing reasonable possibilities for life, not preoccupying ourselves with how best to end a life we decide is not worth living.”

As Trump signs EO to expand IVF, worries remain over destruction of embryos

Unsurprisingly, many pro-life organisations have expressed concern over the expansion and ease of access to in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in the United States. Trump’s Executive Order paves the way for more embryonic children to be created in a lab, inhumanly stored through cryopreservation, and to be destroyed. In response to the Executive Order, pro-life leaders are raising awareness of the wide availability of effective fertility treatments that respect human dignity and have asked that there be “guardrails” put in place and conscience objections respected.

It appears the Trump administration may be prepared to listen if the response given by a White House official to Daily Wire correspondent Margaret Olohan is correct. The responder indicated that pro-life groups were amongst those who would be canvassed for recommendations about the IVF policy.  Such an opportunity will theoretically allow pro-life leaders to shape how the Trump administration addresses infertility, focusing on moral interventions.

FLI comment:
It is critical that the Trump administration carefully reconsider its expansion of access to IVF. God’s plan is for children to be begotten in marriage. Infertility is a very heavy cross for couples to carry. While it is morally permissible to undergo interventions that assist the man and wife in conceiving, it is never moral for these interventions to replace the marital act. Further, storing embryonic human beings for later use and destroying those that are not required is a crime against their inherent dignity. Let’s pray that the pro-life movement in the United States will be able to influence policy on this matter.

EU ‘bans the word man’ in inclusive language guide

The latest revision of the European Commission’s “English Style Guide” has been released, bringing to the forefront the verbal engineering that has been taking place by stealth for many years. Intended for authors and translators, the Guide requests that words containing “man” be avoided and inclusive alternatives be adopted instead. Examples cited are to replace “mankind” with “humanity,” and “labour hours” instead of “man hours,” among others.

Lord Young, founder of the British Free Speech Union, remarked in response to the changes, “The European Commission clearly hasn’t got the memo. I think J.D. Vance needs to make another speech.”

Several changes have been effected since 2018 to ensure more “gender-inclusive” language is used, revealing the true political agenda little by little.