Secondly - just because NORMAL procedure is to harvest, fertilise and implant multiple eggs (it’s mainly a money-saving thing) might not mean it has to be done that way in every single case. Like I said, assuming that it is possible to harvest, fertilise and implant just a single egg, what would be wrong with that?
I work in a lab and I am somewhat familiar with the process. I have never heard of them fertilizing just one egg. There may be a process that I don’t know about but I don’t see how fertilizing just one egg can be done.
And fertilizing more than one egg isn’t for saving money it’s because of statistics and logic.
As I am sure everyone knows, the woman takes fertility drugs to stimulate egg production. The eggs are harvested using a hollow needle and they aspirate eggs. While the woman is still sedated, a lab tech looks at the aspirate to verify there are eggs. The point I am trying to make here is that the doctor has no control over how many eggs, if any, he/she is aspirating. I think the average is 10-12 eggs but a lot of time the number could be lower or higher.
But technically the number of harvested eggs isn’t a concern regarding the Catholic faith because they aren’t fertilized.
After the harvest, there is a very small window of time to fertilize the eggs. The eggs are put in a petri dish with sperm and the sperm is allowed to fertilize on its own. With this method, they can’t put just one egg in there because statistically it would never get fertilized. But on the contrary, with multiple eggs in the dish, there is no control of how many eggs are fertilized. There is also a method where they use a special needle to physically insert a sperm into the egg when the sperm count is low. That method can sort of control the number that are fertilized but statistically it’s still a bad idea to do just one. The reason is because they won’t know immediately if the egg is viable or not. By the time they do know if the egg is viable it’s too late to fertilize the other eggs if it’s not viable. So in other words, they would have to start then entire egg harvest over meaning waiting through another cycle and more sedation for the woman, etc.
In the past only embryos (fertilized eggs) and sperm could be frozen but now they are learning how to freeze unfertilized eggs. But it’s still a rare process and there are very few labs that do it so it’s not an option in most areas to freeze unfertilized eggs in hopes of using them later. It has been done and women have gotten pregnant using thawed out eggs but it’s not a common practice.
Once fertilization has taken place they inspect all of the eggs to make sure they are dividing correctly. This is done about 24 - 48 hrs after fertilization. After 3 -5 days after fertilization, they select the best fertilized eggs for implanting. . So, it’s better to do multiple eggs in order to have at least one or two viable eggs. They can’t take the chance of only allowing one egg to be fertilized because that fertilized egg may not be viable or it might have something wrong with it
And the process the woman has to go through to stimulate egg production and to have the eggs harvested is way too invasive to just fertilize one egg at a time and hope it works. If it doesn’t work she has to wait until another cycle and then go though the whole thing again.
I think four is the maximum number of fertilized eggs they will implant and that is age dependent. In some countries they will only implant one or two eggs in order to avoid multiple births. Older women will have three or four eggs implanted while younger women only have one or two implanted. So, if there is going to be success with invitro, they have to fertilize more than one egg.
And embryos can be frozen for later use by either the woman they came from or she can donate them.
Also, if needed, they collect sperm from an incision in a testicle but they prefer the less invasive method of collection if possible.
So I guess if they fertilize one egg at a time and freeze the other eggs (if that procedure is available) and retrieve sperm directly from the testicle, it would follow Catholic law. I guess it took me writing this whole thing out to come to that conclusion.
