An anonymous U.K. couple’s overseas surrogacy agency used the wrong sperm when fertilizing donor eggs and implanting them in a surrogate, resulting in twins with no biological connection to the IVF couple or the woman who birthed the child and no relational connection to the biological mother.
The couple told The Guardian they were “devastated” to learn their twins had no biological connection to the intended father. Yet they had no qualms about removing the children from their gestational (surrogate) and biological (egg donor) mothers — a process which raises its own ethical concerns as the two-woman egg and surrogate process divides the biological roles of a mother between two people.
That the couple heavily emphasized their desire for the children to have the father’s DNA and yet willingly left the twins’ biological mother by the wayside shows the fundamental evils of IVF: It dehumanizes women and moms and deprives children of their right to biological parents.
“Biology is SO important … but only when the adults want it to be,” Katy Faust, the founder of the pro-life organization Them Before Us, said on X in response to the couple’s story. “All of #bigfertility is forcing children to sacrifice for adults.”
One commenter noted how the flippancy the IVF process demonstrates toward a mother’s DNA by encouraging the use of surrogates and donor eggs turns women into “interchangeable body bags.” When the miraculous God-given gift of children is desecrated into a scientific project, the most vulnerable — the women and children involved — are often hurt the most.
For example, the U.K. couple’s “IVF journey” hurt more children than their adopted twins. The Guardian reported that the couple started unsuccessful IVF “treatments” sometime after 2017. That process probably resulted in the culturally accepted deaths of multiple tiny humans, since a single round of IVF usually creates seven to 10 embryos.
The couple then traveled to India to continue making children in labs. After another unknown number of IVF embryo creation rounds, the wife bore twins who died a few days later “due to health complications.” A final effort for children led the couple to a lab in Sri Lanka, where another round of IVF, a sperm “mix-up,” and a surrogate brought about the twins they have today. In total, the couple could have left a bloodless trail of more than 20 children in their IVF wake, all because adult selfishness twisted their rightful desire for children.
When children are so desired that adults commoditize them, the children pay the price in their health and well-being. Some of the children who survive implantation and birth face various genetic challenges due to the IVF process, such as “preterm birth, low birth weight, small size for gestational age, perinatal mortality, and congenital anomalies.” Some studies found that IVF children may even be at a higher risk for cardiovascular issues, diabetes, autism, and childhood cancer.
The risks for these complications increase dramatically for embryonic children born after being frozen and thawed. The most significant case of a “thawed child” is Thaddeus Daniel Pierce, the “world’s oldest baby,” according to Guinness World Records. Pierce’s mother froze him and his siblings in 1994. Pierce stayed in stasis for over 31 years until a Christian couple adopted him and his siblings in 2022. Pierce was the only embryo to survive the thaw and was born in July of 2025.
Now 1 year old, Thaddeus is probably at increased risk for complications after being frozen for so long, yet Guinness reports he is a healthy baby. Even though Thaddeus is a blessing, some of the circumstances he was born into are bleak. Thaddeus’ biological mother is more than 60 years old, his one living sibling that his mother had when she was young is in her 30s, and the rest of his siblings are dead.
Many other stories exist of homosexual couples, embryonic children thrown away for “undesirable traits,” or Chinese nationals buying children through IVF to satisfy their adult wishes to the detriment of the children. Because of reasons like these, many pro-lifers believe, like Faust, that “you can be pro-life and pro-family, or you can be pro-IVF. But you can’t be both.”
