Fascinating and thought-provoking. Thanks! While I have no disagreemtn with your final paragraph, I don't agree that in vitro is necessarily not an act of love, and I think almost always that it is.

Children are little people, with their own thoughts, dreams, feelings, hurts, sense of justice, wills, intellects, and memories.

How could a "child" possibly have all these attributes before it has even entered the world?

Two points in response to the last comment. First, a fetus has "entered the world" as soon as he or she was conceived. Second, while it is true that a fetus does not have all of the attributes mentioned, there are other reasons to treat the fetus with appropriate dignity. The most important is that human beings have an innate dignity and should be treated with this dignity at all stages of their lives.

The "pro-life" movement reminds me of that Ikea commercial: "Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because you're crazy."

It is possible that a fetus can feel pain in the biochemical sense, the way that an insect might. But there is no way a fetus has thoughts, dreams, sense of justice, wills, intellects, or memories; in marked contrast to the woman who bears it.

There are many cases where people develop unusually strong emotional attachments to animals, treasured belongings, or people they've never met. That's normally harmless. But there comes a point where your fetishes infringe on the hopes and ambitions and the dignity of other people. At that point, you cause more suffering, not less.

JR, I wouldn't go about it that way - I would say that "choice" is a matter of competing rights and that as painful as the choice may be, the functioning person's rights to determine the "management" of her own body outweighs those of a pre-person. The ultimate point is to give every born child the kind of care and attention that Kieran is calling for.