The CEO of an in vitro fertilization company says sex is for fun and IVF is for conceiving babies.
Noor Siddiqui is the founder of Orchid, a company that screens embryos for those using IVF services and looks for possible genetic defects and disease.
Siddiqui recently equated the idea of using IVF screening to providing the maximum amount of love to a child, meaning that if parents choose not to use IVF, they are subjecting their offspring to untold risks.
'I didn't want to quote that to you because I thought it was so ridiculous, but go on.'
Siddiqui gave an interview to the New York Times podcast "Interesting Times with Ross Douthat," where the host saved his best question for last. After reciting a poem that describes the magic of a man and woman creating life, Douthat asked Siddiqui about the idea that she wants to take that magic away.
"You're imagining a future where that just goes away. And I'm wondering if you think anything would actually be lost if that goes away," Douthat asked.
In response, Siddiqui recalled her own quote: "Sex is for fun; Orchid and embryo screening is for babies."
Douthat immediately replied, "I didn't want to quote that to you because I thought it was so ridiculous, but go on."
The CEO claimed that because most sexual encounters do not result in a pregnancy, "it's actually not so strange of a concept" that IVF becomes the predominant way to conceive.
"But when you get a baby, most people get it from having sex," Douthat argued. "It is linked inextricably to having sex with your spouse. And you are saying it's time to sever that for the sake, I concede, of potential medical benefits."
While one might consider that Siddiqui is simply providing a service to those who cannot conceive naturally, the CEO made it clear that she believes those who do not use IVF are rolling the dice on their child's health.
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"I think that if you have enormous genetic privilege and, for you to roll the dice and to get a outcome that isn't going to lead to disease is in the cards for you, then of course, go ahead and roll the dice," Siddiqui told the host.
The 29-year-old claimed "the vast majority of parents" will not want to "roll the dice," before stating that IVF screenings are actually the highest form of love a parent can give a child.
Parents are "going to see it as taking the maximum amount of care, the maximum amount of love, in the same way that they plan their nursery plan, their home plan, their preschool," she said.
Siddiqui then turned in vitro around on naturally conceiving parents and said it would be "denigrating and dismissive" to IVF parents to say that babies conceived through IVF are somehow "inferior to babies that are made the old-fashioned way."
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BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey took a hard stance on the issue and said embryo screening is not a moral or ethical option.
"When technology takes us from what's natural to what's possible, we have the obligation to ask: But is it moral? Is it ethical? Is it biblical?" Stuckey told Blaze News. "The answer here is: no, no, and no. Embryos are human, and like all humans they have an inherent right to life."
Siddiqui said in a 2024 interview with Mercury that she has "always known" that she wanted to conceive through IVF, despite neither her nor her husband having any fertility issues.
In the interview, she argued it was actually "unethical" to stigmatize the embryo screenings and argued it is not "playing God" to get a cast for a broken leg or to have chemotherapy for cancer. Therefore, she is not interrupting "God's plan" with her services.
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