The Blessed Blastocyst
It makes one wonder when miscarriage and menstruation will become manslaughter, too (although it does bolster my argument that married straight couples who fail to produce at least one child every 9 months sin much more, and far more frequently, than any male-male couple ever could):
Nature is full of waste. Of all the fertilized blastocysts created for in vitro fertilization only a few actually implant. One female proponent of (Christian) blastocyst adoption, Kate Johnson, had eleven blastocysts implanted before one lived. Do the other ten (which failed to thrive) represent human lives? What about all the eggs flushed away by menstruation in a woman's life? We ovulate many more times than we get pregnant. Any woman who is sensitive to her own cycles knows that each twinge in her lower belly (mittleschermz, the OB-GYNs call it), represents an incipient human life. But that egg may be damaged and never implant or it may never be fertilized, or if fertilized it may die for reasons unknown.
[Erica Jong, "President Bush and the Blastocyst", The Huffington Post, 26 May 2005.]