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The recent announcements by Facebook and Apple that they would include among employee health benefits the option for young women to freeze their eggs for future use at a cost of up to $20,000 has been greeted with numerous objections by bioethicists and pro-life leaders. Unlike normal medical procedures intended to restore health to a person with an illness, this proposal offers "risky technology" to otherwise healthy young women, noted Jennifer Lahl, president of the California-based Center for Bioethics and Culture. "This is still an enterprise that has a very high failure rate," she said, and no one yet knows the long-term health effects of the medications and other chemical agents that are used in the processes of retrieving and freezing eggs. It's amazing to her, Lahl said, how little attention "these very smart people" at the tech companies are paying to "human biology 101," which knows that advancing maternal age always carries risks, and she said she wonders what benefits will be offered to women and children who suffer adverse effects. "It's very hard on women's bodies to retrieve eggs to freeze," and very unnatural, Jeanne F. Monahan, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, told Catholic News Service. The Catholic Church views in vitro fertilization as immoral and contrary to natural law.

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