Restricting Research on Embryos but not Restricting IVF – Inconsistency in the Pro-life Camp?

Over at Vox Nova, Mornings Minion comments on an exchange between Michael Kinsley and Ross Douthat on embryo destructive research. MM says (incorrectly I think) that Douthat doesn’t really answer Kinsley’s charge that opponents of embryo destructive research are being inconsistent when they are “content to leave the IVF clinic more or less alone, even if they might personally disagree with the act.” I believe, as MM suggests, that some of the reluctance to impose restrictions on IVF can be accounted for by middle class support for the procedure as a legitimate form of assisted reproduction. But this is only part of the story. The absence of efforts to restrict IVF also represents (1) a calculation that such measures would be politically unfeasible such that any attempt to enact them would harm efforts to restrict embryo destructive research and (2) any restrictions, if enacted, would likely be subject to a successful constitutional challenge under the legal regime created by Roe and its progeny. Thus, while this reluctance to legally limit IVF is not, as MM points out, wholly consistent, it may well reflect a sober recognition of the futility of such measures. In any case, it embodies a prudential judgment, and those who exercise prudence are always subject to the charge of inconsistency, especially when the wisdom of their judgment is still in doubt. Perhaps as a middle course to outright prohibition of IVF (which would surely face overwhelming opposition in the current context), those of us who oppose embryo destructive research should propose limits on the number of embryos that can be produced in the course of a couple's treatment for infertility and (more ambitiously) that a maximum of two or three embryos be produced during a given treatment and that all of them be implanted. In the wake of the outcry over the “Octomom,” there may well be widespread public support for such efforts – efforts that, nevertheless, would still be subject to constitutional challenge. Surely this would not constitute a complete response to the problems presented by the creation of nascent human life outside the womb, but it would be a first step in helping to build a culture of life.