SHOCKING: Number of lives lost to IVF now surpasses those lost to abortion

By: Nancy Flanders, originally published November 9, 2025, LiveAction.org

A report  released by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) earlier this year exposed a dark reality of in vitro fertilization (IVF): in adults’ quest to create children,  most of the children they create using IVF will not survive.

As the number of IVF cycles increases year after year, so does the number of lives lost to the process — and it’s staggering. The total number of lives lost as a result of IVF is now  surpassing  the number of lives lost to induced, elective abortion each year.

Key Takeaways:

• More children are now dying from the IVF process than are dying from abortion in the U.S.
• In 2023, there were 432,641 IVF cycles at 371 reporting clinics, but only 95,860 babies were born.
• That year, an estimated 1,946,884 embryos did not survive to be implanted, and another 1,759,664 were either frozen, destroyed, donated to research, or released for embryo adoption.
• In comparison, there were 1,037,000 abortions in the US in 2023.

The Details:

According to SART, which is an affiliate of the pro-abortion American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the number of IVF cycles carried out in the US continues to rise at a faster rate than the number of live births associated with IVF.

In 2023, the number of IVF cycles carried out at the 371 reporting SART member clinics reached 432,641, an increase of nearly 11% from 2022 (389,993).   But the number of babies  born  from IVF totalled just 95,860, an increase of only 4.45% from 2022 (91,771 in 2022) — a small  fraction  of the number of embryos created. Where are all of those other children?

Reproductive Medicine Associates  offers this chart detailing an example of the process:

For comparison, the IVF company  Alfie  offers  this breakdown:

Based on these charts, there is an average of 10-12 embryos created per IVF cycle, but fertility businesses often  list  anywhere from seven embryos up to as many as 17 per cycle. Using a  conservative   nine  embryos as the average number created per cycle, at 432,641 cycles, that totals about 3,893,769 embryos created via IVF in 2023 alone. Yet only 95,860 babies were born.

Here’s how those numbers break down. Up to  half  of the original 3,893,769, likely did not survive beyond the next two stages: the blastocyst stage  and  the genetic testing stage. The embryos were graded and labeled during testing, and those not deemed healthy enough were automatically destroyed.

That’s about 1,946,884 embryos who died or were deliberately killed without being given a chance to be implanted.

Of the remaining estimate of 1,946,884, SART states that  91,360  were automatically “banked” for “future use,” as was the parents’ plan when they began the process. We also know that after being graded, labeled, selected, and transferred, only 95,860 survived to birth.

That leaves 1,759,664 human embryos unaccounted for. They survived to the blastocyst stage and passed genetic testing, but they were then either miscarried, destroyed, donated to researchers (and ultimately destroyed), released for embryo adoption ( just 1-6%), or are frozen indefinitely. The data don’t tell us, but we can estimate that at least 1.9 million died before even making it to the implantation or freezing stage of the IVF process, and another 1.7 million are not statistically accounted for.

In comparison, according to Guttmacher,  1,037,880  abortions were committed in the US in 2023.

Why It Matters:

The number of humans dying during the IVF process each year has surpassed the number of humans dying from abortion each year in the US.

The mere fact that half of the IVF embryos won’t make it beyond the initial first steps after fertilization, including the health screening, should be enough to prove that IVF is not about  creating  life but about  controlling  it, determining which lives are accepted as valuable and worthy and which are automatically destroyed for being deemed ‘subpar.’

A process marketed as “pro-life”  can never  involve the  deliberate  destruction of human life. No human being deserves to be graded, labeled, and destroyed for not living up to expectations or to be treated as a commodity aimed at fulfilling a fertility clinic’s desire to give clients a “quality product.”

Nancy Flanders is Associate Editor for Live Action News.

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