The Baby in the freezer

The morality of test tube babies is rarely discussed for fear of hurting people who would do anything to have a baby.

Yet the problems are immense. Discussion here.

the huge numbers of frozen babies in freezers is a very disturbing problem: If you "adopt" one, it implies to parents who let their babies in the freezer that they will eventually be adopted, so you end up with more frozen babies. If you use them for "research" ditto

The dirty little secret is that old, frozen embryos are no good for research, and the longer they are in the freezer, the fewer embryos will survive even if implanted.

If life begins at conception, this is a horrendous idea: that we enslave and allow millions of children to die for the convenience of parents.

Which is why the "experts" have decided that "life" begins at implantation, not conception, as we were taught in medical school: the changed the definition to obscure that this technology takes life.

And of course it allows the morning after pill to be called a contraceptive pill, even though if you take it immediately, it stops ovulation and is contraceptive, if you take it after several hours, it stops the fertilized egg from implanting, but if you take it a few days later, it merely aborts the already growing embryo implanted in the uterus, and indeed causes an abortion.(and now, we find the morning after pill doesn't work in fat women. Heh. Next thing you know they will figure out it does't work very well in teenagers either, who don't take it correctly because it is nauseating).

There are other ethical issues behind the practice: donating eggs is not exactly a risk free practice (although the risk is minimal).

As for "surrogancy", especially when outsourced to poor countries (It's a big industry in India) it has other ethical problems.

like "voluntary" organ donation from the poor in third world countries, it exploits the poor (emotionally, physically and financially, since the middle man gets most of the money).

Ah, but poor women do it and don't care right?

I remember a discussion with a Pinoy taxi driver who said he wouldn't have problem if his girlfriend made money by carrying a surrogate baby...and then the reporter asked the girlfriend, who retorted: I get attached to my cellphone and upset when I lost it. Don't you think it might be hard for me to carry a baby for nine months and give it up?