Live from Jackson Hole 2015 Weblogging: From the standpoint of the arguments set forth by the far right--ensoulment the moment the sperm's DNA strands touch the egg's, original sin, hence eternal separation from the embrace of the Almighty for all those souls that were never baptized--a single IVF cycle is at least ten times blacker a mortal sin and crime than is an abortion. Yet First Things does not run debates about "Killing IVF Nurses". Bishops do not preach against IVF. The American Principles Project either is silent or at most whispers very quietly about its objections to IVF. Demonstrators do not harass IVF patients, or firebomb IVF clinics:
Eschaton: IVF: "The lack of conservative opposition to IVF (there is some, but not much) demonstrates that it's just an anti-sex movement...
:...If you really want to have a babby, anything is fine, but if you're a dirty hooooar who likes sex than you must be 'punished.'
Fertility clinics destroy embryos all the time. Why aren’t conservatives after them?: "Last month, my husband and I signed forms donating an embryo we had conceived to medical research...
:...Meanwhile, conservative Republicans are vowing to defund Planned Parenthood for allowing women who have abortions to make the same choice. My husband and I used in vitro fertilization.... We hope our choice will help doctors find cures for debilitating and fatal illnesses such as Huntington’s disease and ALS....
There are striking differences between my experience and that of a woman seeking an abortion.... All my husband and I had to do was sign a form. Our competence to choose the outcome of our embryo was never questioned. There were no mandatory lectures on gestation, no requirement that I be explicitly told that personhood begins at conception or that I view a picture of a day-five embryo. There was no compulsory waiting period.... No state imposes these restrictions--so common for abortion patients--on patients with frozen embryos....
The disparity between how the law treats abortion patients and IVF patients reveals... abortion restrictions... are often less about protecting life than about controlling women’s bodies.... Abortion restrictions use unwanted pregnancy as a punishment for ‘irresponsible sex’.... If you didn’t want to endure a mandatory vaginal ultrasound, you shouldn’t have had sex in the first place.... The same conservatives who restrict abortion also oppose insurance coverage for contraception....
IVF patients make less-attractive targets because we don’t challenge the expectation that women want to be mothers.... [Thus] I have greater freedom to decide what to do with an embryo in a petri dish than a pregnancy in my own body. This disparity also reveals a great deal about whose bodies our laws restrict...