Large numbers of embryos, in other words, die as collateral damage in any case, side effects of normal, natural attempts to get pregnant.
http://machineslikeus.com/articles/CollateralDamage1.ht
"If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined," declared Michael Sandel, a Harvard University government professor, also a member of the President's Council on Bioethics.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34948.html
Let us start with the free and completely unfettered liberty to establish a pregnancy by sexual reproduction without any "medical" assistance.
What are people and societies who accept this free and unfettered liberty committing themselves to? What has a God who has ordained natural procreation committed herself to?
We now know that for every successful pregnancy that results in a live birth many, perhaps as many as five early embryos will be lost or "miscarry" (although these are not perhaps "miscarriages" as the term is normally used, because this sort of very early embryo loss is almost always entirely unnoticed). Many of these embryos will be lost because of genetic abnormalities but some would have been viable. How are we to think of the decision to attempt to have a child in the light of these facts? One obvious and inescapable conclusion is that God and/or nature has ordained that "spare" embryos be produced for almost every pregnancy, and that most of these will have to die in order that a sibling embryo can come to birth. Thus the sacrifice of embryos seems to be an inescapable and inevitable part of the process of procreation.
http://newhumanist.org.uk/443
In vitro fertilization, IVF, is a wonderful technique whereby couples that cannot conceive normally are helped to achieve their dream. The woman is stimulated by hormone injections to super-ovulate. As many as a dozen eggs are harvested from her ovaries under general anaesthetic. An attempt is made to fertilize all these eggs with her husband’s sperm, in a dish. Of those that are fertilized, two, or occasionally three, are chosen for insertion into the uterus. The remainder are either flushed down the drain, or used for research, or frozen for future possible use. Of the two or three that are implanted, the expectation is that no more than one will survive. Sometimes twins are born and very occasionally triplets. But doctors do not implant three conceptuses in the hope of making triplets. Quite the contrary. In the unlikely event that all three implant successfully and develop, normal practice is to kill at least one of them. A surplus is provided in the hope that one will survive. IVF doctors, in other words, do what nature (or God if that is how your mind works) does anyway: they budget extra embryos which are destined to die as collateral damage in the course of bringing one of their siblings to term.
http://machineslikeus.com/articles/CollateralDamage1.html
Sexual Intercourse While Trying to Conceive Causes More Embryo Loss Than Abortion:
If you truly value each embryo as much as each born child, then you would have to be against anyone ever having another child, because more embryos die than are ever born, so the bottom line is, you kill more unborn children than ever get born, just in the process of trying to have a born child.
If your first reaction is that, well, that loss is really just part of nature, and so it's not that bad, then I ask you this:
If it is ok that up to 9 embryos die for every child born, would it be ok if some of your born children died while you were trying to conceive another?
OF COURSE NOT, RIGHT? But why? Their deaths would just be part of nature, exactly equivalent to the embryos that die so that one can be born, right?
The answer is, no one really values an embryo as much as they do a born child, no matter what they think.
"We now know that for every successful pregnancy which results in a live birth, many, perhaps as many as five, early embryos will be lost or 'miscarry' (although these are not perhaps miscarriages' as the term is normally used, because this sort of very early embryo loss is almost always entirely unnoticed).
How are we to think of the decision to have a child in the light of these facts? One obvious and inescapable conclusion is that God and/or nature has ordained that 'spare' embryos be produced for almost every pregnancy, and that most of these will have to die in order that a sibling embryo can come to birth. Thus the sacrifice of embryos seems to be an inescapable and inevitable part of the process of procreation. .**"
Large numbers of embryos, in other words, die as collateral damage in any case, side effects of normal, natural attempts to get pregnant. source
In fact, In Vitro Fertilization Kills Less Embryos Than Sexual Intercourse:
"[D]efenders of in vitro fertilization point out that embryo loss in assisted reproduction is less frequent than in natural pregnancy, in which more than half of all fertilized eggs either fail to implant or are otherwise lost. This fact highlights a further difficulty with the view that equates embryos and persons. If natural procreation entails the loss of some embryos for every successful birth, perhaps we should worry less about the loss of embryos that occurs in in vitro fertilization and stem-cell research. Those who view embryos as persons might reply that high infant mortality would not justify infanticide. But the way we respond to the natural loss of embryos suggests that we do not regard this event as the moral or religious equivalent of the death of infants. Even those religious traditions that are the most solicitous of nascent human life do not mandate the same burial rituals and mourning rites for the loss of an embryo as for the death of a child. Moreover, if the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions; alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined."
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/351/3/207
Both natural procreation and ART involve a process in which embryos, additional to those
that will actually become children, are created only to die.
It is debatable whether natural reproduction imposes any risk at all on any embryo. The risk
of dying (let us assume it is 80%) is inherent to the embryo’s nature. It is not as if the same
embryo could have been created without that chance of dying
http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:IQhcY1sfGLwJ:www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/Resources/Cloning_StemCell/embryo_research.pdf+john+harris+embryo+loss+part+of+procreation&cd=12&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
What are some of the potentially relevant moral features of natural reproduction?
1. Natural reproduction involves a very high rate of embryo loss. We have assumed that four
out of five embryos perish during attempts at natural reproduction.1
2. These deaths are an unavoidable part of natural reproduction. Some of these are
genetically abnormal and could never survive. But some will be genetically normal and could
have survived, if uterine or other conditions were different. However, the deaths of these
embryos are unavoidable given the current state of knowledge.
3. There is an alternative to natural reproduction: childlessness through contraception or
abstinence.
4. Natural reproduction is voluntary. The precise fraction of embryos that
perish during natural reproduction is not crucial. Even if 99% of embryo perished during
natural reproduction, embryo rightists and other defenders of natural reproduction would go
on regardless. What is crucial is that the practice necessarily involves some embryos dying
and some surviving.
http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:J_zZsHzaJhMJ:www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/Resources/Cloning_StemCell/creation_lottery_harris_savulescu.pdf+john+harris+embryo+loss+part+of+procreation&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
