I am pro-choice and in favor of legal abortion. I support all reporductive choices. I do wonder however why there are so many unfertaile couples and why they do not attmept to adopt. In the past, wihtout this technolgy most people took thier chances and chose to adopt. Don't be fooled that abortion reduces the numbers of adoptees. There are plenty of children to adopt.

I am also a firm believer that we should be looking at population reduction as a moral issue in regard to the enviromnet and global warming. Why don't these pople take the moral high ground and not have children. Maybe nature is telling us something... we need to reduce the number of children born. However just because I support legal aboritn does not mean I advocate population reduction through abortion. Incentives for not geting pregnant , and not having children should be put on the table. Not eveyone needs to reproduce themselves, and these In Vetro methods often lead to multiple births with defects.

Abortion is not as easy an issue as it seems to many people.

To me, the battle lines are between those who see parenthood as a way of life, and children as a gift; and those to see parenthood as an option, and children as a project.

Beth, having gone through so much to have a child, realized that in a real sense children are a gift.

I'm not necessarily trying to score pro-life points here. It is perfectly consistent for Beth, even now, to be pro-choice; there are other factors to consider in the abortion question, after all. But it was good to see someone be honest about how complex our feelings are about an "embryonic" stage of life.

In Beth Kohl's book she apparently does not talk about abortion in the case of an unwanted pregnancy. When I was about 19, I became pregnant, as a result of foolish choices I made, and I had an abortion that was illegal in both my home in California, and where I had the procedure, in Tijuana, Baja California. In the process, I was raped by the abortionist.

Later, I had three children, all born of my first marriage. I love them dearly, and do not wish that any of them had not been born. However, my experience of child-bearing is so different from the author's, that I cannot relate to it.

Adoption is not the easy option it's often depicted to be. You're fingerprinted, your background is questioned-- both legally and morally-- the waits are horrible and the fees ludicrous. In addition, 'birth parent' rights are pretty entrenched in the law, and the scare cases of the 90's-- the kids taken away from loving, adoptive parents and returned to the birth parents-- are burned into some potential parent's minds.

That's not even addressing the racism and cultural taboos that come hand in hand with many adoptions.

The people in my family faced with infertility chose adoption and I think they made the right choice, but it's not a bed of roses by any means. And wanting to carry your own child is a deep emotional craving for many people. I can understand why IVF has become the cottage industry it is.

I wish there was more support in this country for adoption and adoptive parents, but that's a story for another day.

Kohl sounds thoughtful and deeply moral, and this was a great interview, at any rate. I think I'll check out the book.

World population is at 6.5 BILLION right now, estimated to rise to over 9 billion by mid-century. People who undergo IVF and other fertility treatments, and the doctors who enable them should be prosecuted for environmental crimes.

The spiraling-out-of-control overpopulation of our country & world has little to do with a relatively few number of infertile couples doing IVF, etc....

...And more to do with the resistance to family planning from Catholics, and/or (in this country particularly) Hispanics, and evangelical Christians.

A Mexican woman living in Mexico has an average of 2.6 kids. A Mexican woman who is an illegal alien in the US has an average of 6.3 kids - basically, because the standard of living here is better, illegal Mexican families choose to have a lot more kids here.

It may be highly politically incorrect to do so, but until we address family planning issues with US Christians, missionaries who preach against any form of contraception in lands near and far, and yes - illegal aliens who are reproducing like bunnies - then the national and global population will hit a critical mass very soon....to the detriment of ALL OF US.

I'd like to know where Anonymous got the figure that although Mexicans in Mexico have a fertility rate of 2.6, those who are illegally in the USA have a fertility rate of 6+.

Since people whose presence here is illegal are, well, illegal, and they do not volunteer information to census-takers, and likely conceal their status as best they can, and their total numbers are not even known, how would one arrive at such a figure for total fertility?

Carramba!

Ms. Kohl deserves credit for shining a light on a poorly understood technology. But the more I read the interview, the more I was impressed that she had not made her mind up. She seems agnostic on so many things. Not that there is anything wrong with admitting to not knowing, but without a moral stance, how can you argue anything?

Consider this quote: "A lot of people have been disappointed in their spiritual leaders' response to their questions." What she is really saying is that she wants her spiritual leaders to treat the issue as an unresolved question. She wants her religious leaders to be irresolute as she is.

I don't think it is fair to expect people to be irresolute just because you are. Or to say that there is a moral high ground in open-mindedness when open mindedness means playing both sides of the fence. Ms. Kohl's weakness in the matter shows through in her confusion over what to do with her frozen embryos. I suppose she will never decide. When she dies she will leave the embryos to her children in her will, and her kids will be stuck in the same moral neutral ground she is.

I know this sounds a little harsh, but you have to make up your mind about the morality of a decision before you do it, and not continue to waffle even years after the fact. Views like this do not take society forward.